ATTENTION! USB technical problems (Hardware conflicts) and how to do "fdisk" with WinXP Pro.

[Lysimachus]

I have a new rig with an Optical USB Kensington Mouse as well as a wireless Chieftec keyboard and wireless Chieftec mouse. After I was finished building my system, I started out with the USB mouse when installing WinXP Pro. Everything worked fine UNTIL, I decided to mess around with the wireless mouse that came with the Chieftec and connect it in conjunction with the USB mouse. (Note, the wireless mouse and keyboard use regular PS/2 connectors which come from the wireless reciever, not USB).

During various interactions, all of a sudden I noticed that my USB mouse was not detecting correctly. So I restarted the comp, and nothing! Was not detecting. Then I unplugged the USB mouse and plugged it back in, still nothing. I rebooted. Then I tried unplugging the USB mouse and plugging it into ANOTHER USB port. It worked! Relief came quickly, but then when I rebooted, same problem again.

I went into the device manager and deleted all the USB ports and mice. But as soon as I plug it in or reboot WinXP, everything gets detected again. But my USB mouse does not work right, and I don't know what to do. It is not a problem with my mouse, it is problem with hardware conflicts with my USB ports. The reason I know this to be was I tested and took my other optical usb mouse which works just fine on my other system and plugged it in to the new system. Same problem occurs with that USB mouse!

So finally, I got so fed up that I thought I should just fdisk everything and start over with clean install. However, I don't know how to make a XP boot disk to get to the DOS prompt. I want to format everything from scratch, but in WinXP Pro help, it tells me I can't uninstall WinXP Pro (only regular XP though).

I am at a loss of route to take here. What is my best bet? How do I remove this conflict? Sometimes I get a little bubble message from the task bar stating that a USB device is not being recognized, but I can't even click the message because the mouse doesn't work! I couldn't get the keyboard to highlight it either!


Someone, I would appreciate your help. Thanx.

 

[ScrapSilicon]

USB to ps/2 adapter on your optical non-wireless mouse then get the driver situation worked out from that 1st

 

[Lysimachus]

I was hoping to avoid that....bummer

But I would appreciate more info regarding the technical aspects of what is taking place. Describe the brain, and why these conflicts are taking place.

Also, what is the best way to go about reformatting the entire HD with WinXP Pro? fdisk? Disk management utility?

 

[DaTT]

If you want to do a fresh start, put your WinXP CD in and reboot off the CD. Choose to install Windows on the partition that its already on, skip through the warnings and what-not, do a full format (not a quick one), and your on your way to freedom!

 

[AgaBoogaBoo]

New PC? Make sreu to get SP1 and then all the udpates. They've released a couple USB and driver related updates...

 

[Viper96720]

Right click on on your floppy drive select format and should be an option to create a boot disk. Have you searched the microsoft knowledge base for anything yet? What motherboard do you have?

 

[Lysimachus]

I have an Epox 8RDA+, and yes, I have done some MS research.

Okay, I created an MS-DOS boot disk. It formatted successfully and made a boot disk. I wanted to just start from scratch...deleting the partitions and reformatting everything. According to guidelines on the web, it says that I must insert the floppy boot disk and then reboot the system to see the command prompt. Then from their fdisk. But NOTHING happens. No COMMAND PROMPT! Just straight to windows everytime with the floppy inserted.

I need an explanation.

Also...

If you want to do a fresh start, put your WinXP CD in and reboot off the CD

What do you mean by "reboot OFF the cd"? Is there some option that allows me to boot "OFF" the cd?

 

[nyoman]

Originally posted by: Lysimachus
I have an Epox 8RDA+, and yes, I have done some MS research.

Okay, I created an MS-DOS boot disk. It formatted successfully and made a boot disk. I wanted to just start from scratch...deleting the partitions and reformatting everything. According to guidelines on the web, it says that I must insert the floppy boot disk and then reboot the system to see the command prompt. Then from their fdisk. But NOTHING happens. No COMMAND PROMPT! Just straight to windows everytime with the floppy inserted.

I need an explanation.

Also...

Get into BIOS Setup and change the boot option from HDD0 to Floppy.

If you want to do a fresh start, put your WinXP CD in and reboot off the CD

What do you mean by "reboot OFF the cd"? Is there some option that allows me to boot "OFF" the cd?[/quote]

He meant put your WinXP CD into your CD Drive, hit reset, press del (or F1, or whatever depends on your motherboard, check your m/b manual) to get into BIOS setup screen. Look for the boot option (or priority), change it to have CDROM as 1st priority boot device. Save the change (usually by pressing F10) and exit the BIOS setup screen. Your computer will reset itself after the POST, you'll be prompted to press any key to boot from CDROM.

Good luck!

nyoman

 

[Viper96720]

You need to go into the bios and make the floppy first boot device then cd-rom then hard drive. If it's HD first it'll just bypass the disks and boot off the hard drive. After formatting the drive install SP1 after windows then the drivers.

 

[Technik]

On the topic of disk managemant utilitys etc...

PartitionMagic is a good app for formatting, and all kinds of other harddrive madness. I use diskeeper for defragging and chkdsk for disc problems; Just type "chkdsk" in command prompt.

 

[Viper96720]

8RDA Faq

 

[Lysimachus]

Okay, I might try the boot from cd option, but first, I was able to get to the command prompt A: I type in "fdisk" or "FDISK" and it says "bad command or file name". Why doesn't typing "fdisk" work?

 

[Viper96720]

What brand model hard drive is it? Most drive companies have a program to completely erase the drive.
formatting using XP cd

 

[syberscott]

You can always just make a windows 98 boot disk if you want to use fdisk to setup partitions. If you use NTFS, select it during the xp install. After the install you can change the other drives to NTFS by right clicking them and formating. It might be the long way around but it'll work.

 

[Montano]

Yes, a Win98 or WinMe boot floppy will work just fine. Be sure to have the floppy drive set to 'first boot device'