Problems with periphials(ok..spelling is incorrect ;) )

[Chaoot]

all of a sudden my cd drive, cd burner, printer and scanner stopped working in the sense that the drives were not recognized by windows anymore and that windows can't communicate to printer and scanner. I reinstalled win98 over the old one (therefore not deleting - since I have no way to back-up) But the problem remained. Internet (to a modem) and the floppy drive strangely work. I tried reinstalling the printer software to no avail.

Will it be as simple as to move all my important files to the d drive and format c and reinstall either win 98 or win 2000; both of which i luckliy have on the hard-disk. Or could it be a hardware problem.

If any other specs are needed i will happily give them..its just to get some ideas..BTW its just a year old my AMD Athlon 500, 128 RAM, Plextor 8by4by32 burner, Toshibo(?-sorry i am not currently behind my computer) dvd-rom, asus graphics v3800 card, hp610C, scanner (?) Hayes Modem of the 28.8k type ( , etc..

 

[AC]

a reinstall of win will replace any corrupted files...but the registry and ini files will basically remain the same as before...

did u try forcing the installation of the devices (maybe for some odd reason, win isn't detecting them, unlikely though)?

prob a hardware problem, or win's hardware configuration gone haywire

the devices are receiving power...

parallel port and secondary ide port don't seem to function?
since the primary hdd is running fine on the primary channel, try disconecting all the ide devices, and attach only the cd drive to the primary channel and boot with a win98 startup disk and select "boot with cd-rom support" to see if dos can detect it

if it is detected fine, then your cd-rom is working, change the cd-rom to the secondary channel and repeat the boot, does it work?

if not, enter the BIOS and load default settings

repeat boot test, still doesn't work?

your motherboard may have died or something is shorting it out

 

[Usul]

Not really an answer, but you have all my cimpathy. I just lost my keyboard and USB controllers, dunno how.
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=32&threadid=314383

 

[Chaoot]

Yep the devices do receive power..very strange..and at the start-up the comp recognizes them. I'll try a few of the tips. AC gave but its not so simple for me .. But it seems like there's nothing else to do than open the 'cage'. But because of the position of the comp it a hell of a job.

Thanx for the sympathy Usul..

I'll let U know when its up and running again..hopefully

 

[Usul]

Just an idea, are you positive that there are no yellow question marks in System properties, and no IRQ errors?
Also , what kind of modeem is it?
Internal or external?
If it's internal, try to disable by bios the serial & parallel port.

And keep us informed.