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WTH is up with my hard drive?

D

darkswordsman17

Lifer
First of all, I apologize for the very long post.

Ok, so Saturday evening my computer decides suddenly that it no longer wants to connect to the Internet. Well I try several things, uninstalling chipset drivers, reinstalling them, just doing this with the ethernet drivers, but no go. Well, at one point, Windows decides to crap out and not load properly, so I go in and try to repair it using the Windows disk. It works, although it seems that it basically reinstalled itself and the other software, but since it appears to be back to normal I don't think much of it. Well, still no go with connnecting to the Internet. So, I figure maybe its the stupid drivers again, and I go into safe mode, thinking I'll uninstall them there and then driver cleaner them out and then re-install. Well, it screws up and freezes while un-installing, so I restart, but Windows once again decides it wants to be a PITA. So, I go to run the repair again, but it screws up and says Windows can't find some file and blah blah, blue screens then restarts. Well, since I have the drive in 3 partitions, I go to install it on the empty one, thinking, I'll just go with a fresh start. Well, it appears to be going good and installs fine. I install the chipset/ethernet drivers and restart accordingly. Well, it refuses to connect. So, I go into safe mode and do something, maybe a system restore to before the install of the chipset drivers. Well, it locks up and so I restart. Whaddya know, Windows is fubar'ed again. Well, I decide I'll give the repair a try. Now when I try to run the disc after it does the initial loading of Windows components off of the CD it starts failing. Like the screen would go black (even though it was still getting a signal). I restart and try again several times, sometimes even actually getting it to load only to have it stop and say it can't find some file(s) and so it restarts (this is off of the cd like doing a new install, not just regular loading of Windows). Well, I then gave up for the day, and decided I'd wait until tomorrow to mess with it. I give up on that drive and decide that I'll put in my old IDE Quantum Fireball 14GB 5400 RPM drive (lets just say its a little slow). Ok, well I'm going to install Windows on it, but it keeps giving me the BS about it can't find some files. I'm getting annoyed, because it should be reading the files from the disc and loading them from there. Well, I disconnect the other drive that I was having problems with the day before (I didn't think it would cause problems since I'm not trying to install to it). This fixes the problem and I'm able to install Windows. I check to see if it'll connect and it does no problem. Well, after installing SP2 (took waaaaaay tooo long on the crappy old drive), I'm back to being able to use my computer. Today, I decide I'll plug the other drive back in since things are working fine, but guess what, if its plugged in, Windows won't load and it gives me some crap about files not being found. Without it plugged in, everything's fine. Does anyone have any idea whats going on?

Here's the specs.
DFI nF3 250Gb board
Seagate 7200RPM 160GB SATAII drive (very nice drive I must say, its been flawless up until whatever is going on now).
I've never had to install SATA drivers for this board, so I never did.
Drivers are the 5.10 directly from nVidia's site.

I've tried connecting it to the different SATA ports, but still the same problems when its connected. Could the chips handling the SATA have gone wacky on me? Any clues what might be causing these problems. I'm sure its probably something incredibly simple.

Once again, I apologize for the wordy post.
 
Wow, I think you went overboard with the Internet problem. You likely just had a Ethernet or modem hardware failure. Happened once to me. Do you have dial up or broadband?

I know the reason why it won't boot today is because you likely have your OS hard drive set as the slave or have it on cable select. So when you installed the drive again, the BIOS sees it as a slave and try's to look for the OS boot files on the other hard drive which does not contain them.

You can fix this by either setting the jumpers on the back of the hard drives correctly. Setting the drive with the OS to Master. Take out the jumper and move it to the slot that says "M" while your other data drives jumper goes under the slot that says "S" above it.

Or

You can just re arrange the hard drives on the IDE channel. That's if of course if they were originally on cable select to begin with.

Just to make sure, if your bios has a option to set which hard drive to bootable, select the proper drive that has the OS on it as bootable in the BIOS set up. (It likely wont let you select the right one unless the hard drive that has the OS is set t master)

If you don't know all ready, when you remove the hard drive from the motherboard, Windows has to then reconfigure and allocate all your devices again on the next boot.

Good luck.
 
Well, the problem is that I can't run any programs as if the drive is plugged in at all, Windows will fail to boot regardless of which drive its on. This means that if the drive with the problems is plugged in, then even the IDE drive that I'm currently using will fail to boot. Same reason I can't format it. If the drive is plugged in, Windows refuses to do anything (even when I'm running it off of the CD). It blue screens everytime.

I know it wasn't a modem/router/network problem as my roomates computer was on the whole time and I also checked my Xbox and it connected fine.

I know its not a master/slave problem.

This is confusing me to no end, as it just doesn't make sense for it to do this. Its like Windows refuses to work with this drive. I guess maybe I'll try installing a SATA driver, see if maybe that is causing it (I've never had to before with this board/drive combo).

Oh, and the memory is fine, been memtested and I know its good.

Just the strangest thing I've encountered.

Looks like I might be able to use Seatool after all. Gonna try some things and see if I can get it back.

 
How is the failure to connect to the internet being linked to the hard drive?

From what I gather, the hard drive or Windows installation has nothing to do with the internet not working.
This is what I'd do:

1. Format all partitions with Windows after backing up data as needed. Perform a fresh, clean install.
2. Call the internet service provider to see if there is a problem in your area.
3. Check all connections to the cable modem, and perform diagnostics on the modem itself.
4. Perform diagnostics on your ethernet card
5. Reboot the modem and perform some basic network troubleshooting.
6. Try to switch cables

Use commands like ipconfig /release and then ipoconfig /renew to see if your computer is being assigned an IP address. Ping/Tracert to check for connectivity.

EDIT: Its nice and easy to read a lot of text if there are paragraphs.
 
I experienced some really strange IDE/ATAPI controller problems recently.

It started with the system not recognizing a new DVDROM device - and went downhill from there as I configured different master/slave configurations in an attempt to install the device.

At one point, my BIOS would not even recognize the HD.

The problem appears to have been caused by the IDE/ATAPI controller installed with the Nvidia 5.10 driver set.

Updating the IDE/ATAPI controller to the standard MS controller fixed the problem.

Hope this helps!
 
The problems with not being able to connect was what I was originally trying to fix, but then the hard drive went crazy from there. On the drive I'm using now everything is working fine like it should. There is no longer a problem with being able to connect.

Again, I can't format the drive because it won't allow Windows to reach a point where it can. Not even when I'm doing a fresh install from the CD, if the drive is plugged in, it blue screens with an error.

Hmm, maybe I'll try that dunkster. I've actually switched to the chipset drivers that came with the board (they're 4.xx). Still its worth a shot. The BIOS does recognize it no problem, has every time, but its Windows that doesn't like when the drive is plugged in.

Hmm, now the floppy drive is being a pain. The system recognizes the floppy drive is plugged in and it says its working properly, but everytime I put a disk in it says there isn't one (the annoying Please insert a disk into drive A🙂. WTF?
 
Those are some of the same symptoms I experienced - losing the floppy.

Update your IDE/ATAPI controller to the standard MS IDE/ATAPI controller.

It's really a shame that Nvidia can't get this right - because I notice evidence that the Nvidia IDE driver produces faster game-loading from HD with the Nvidia IDE driver.
 
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