Strange IDE connection wont allow internet acces

Hi,

I have been working with vista x64 for several months now and
everything seemed to work just fine up until recently when something
really strange started happening.

I have 3 physical HDDs 2 SATA and 1 IDE, vista is installed on the
smallest SATA drive which is about 80gb and has no secondary partitions,
the other SATA is 300gb and is split in half and the IDE drive is also
split in half but none of them have any OS installed on them.

One day I turned on my PC and discovered that the 2 partitions for the
IDE drive were missing from the "Computer" screen, so I went first to
the device manager to double check and the disk didnt show up in there
either. After that I went to the admin tools in the disk management
section and it was nowhere to be found.

After many attempts of fiddling with it, in the BIOS and in vista
itself i finally got the disk to show up again by connecting the IDE
cable to the secondary IDE slot in the mobo but then a new problem came
up and this one I have no idea how to fix or why its happening.

Everything works fine except that I cannot acces the internet, I know
its not a router problem because I am using it right now on this laptop
to write this, I can acces the local network just fine, its just that I
cant acces the internet.

When I go to the device manager to see whats going on with the network
device, when I click on properties for NVIDIA network controller
(default from the mobo) it says there are no drivers installed for this
device. But If i unplugg the IDE HDD it works fine and I can acces the
net normally.

I think that sums everything up, I hope somebody has any clue as to why
this is happening, thanks a lot in advance and here are my comp specs

MOBO - ASUS P5N-E SLI
6BG ram
1 IDE 200gb HDD
SATA 300 gb HDD
SATA 80 gb HDD (where vista lives)
dual NVIDIA Gforce 9800

Thanks


--
peanuthead

Hi, PeanutHead.

Mixing HDD interfaces can cause some weird problems. When I got my first
IDE drives about 10 years ago, after a decade or more of SCSI-only, it took
a lot of fiddling with cables, BIOS settings and editing Boot.ini - and
several re-installs of Win2K! - to get my system running. And then every
hardware or OS update triggered another round of the same frustrations.
Since finally getting to all-SATA II a couple of years ago, thing have gone
much more smoothly. Since I have only a single computer, I don't have a
wide range of experience, but I can offer a few thoughts that may help.

Older motherboards insisted in booting from IDE, even if SCSI HDDs were
installed, too. Today's mobos should have updated BIOSes that handle this
much better; we don't often hear about such problems with mismatched HDD
interfaces. But yours may have some BIOS setting that needs to be set or
tweaked to skip your IDE drive and boot from the SATA drive where you have
your System Partition. The System Partition is typically the first
partition on the first HDD, but that can vary. And the definition of "first
HDD" can be unclear when there is a mix of IDE and SATA drives.

Both SCSI and SATA HDDs have often needed to have "mass storage drivers"
loaded from a floppy disk by pressing <F6> during the early part of Windows
Setup. Each successive version of Windows has had more "native" drivers,
and each generation of motherboards and chipsets has also had less
compatibility problems. But there is still the possibility that you need to
load drivers during the Setup process, especially if your System Partition
is not on that old standard IDE drive connected as the Master drive on the
first IDE channel.

I'm not a techie and I don't fully understand the "enumeration" process that
identifies hard drives and partitions during boot-up. I have found it very
difficult to reconcile the designations of drives among the BIOS, Disk
Management, Boot.ini and the BCD. "Disk 0" in Drive Management is not
always the HDD designated in the BIOS as the current boot device. And
neither is "rdisk(0)" in WinXP's Boot.ini.

I hope these comments help you find a solution. When you find it, please
post back for the benefit of others. Good luck.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
rc@grandecom.net
Microsoft Windows MVP
Windows Live Mail 2009 (14.0.8089.0726) in Win7 Ultimate x64

"peanuthead" <guest@unknown-email.com> wrote in message
news:8556bd37ffb849fd611a4cd714dca71c@nntp-gateway.com...
>
> Hi,
>
> I have been working with vista x64 for several months now and
> everything seemed to work just fine up until recently when something
> really strange started happening.
>
> I have 3 physical HDDs 2 SATA and 1 IDE, vista is installed on the
> smallest SATA drive which is about 80gb and has no secondary partitions,
> the other SATA is 300gb and is split in half and the IDE drive is also
> split in half but none of them have any OS installed on them.
>
> One day I turned on my PC and discovered that the 2 partitions for the
> IDE drive were missing from the "Computer" screen, so I went first to
> the device manager to double check and the disk didnt show up in there
> either. After that I went to the admin tools in the disk management
> section and it was nowhere to be found.
>
> After many attempts of fiddling with it, in the BIOS and in vista
> itself i finally got the disk to show up again by connecting the IDE
> cable to the secondary IDE slot in the mobo but then a new problem came
> up and this one I have no idea how to fix or why its happening.
>
> Everything works fine except that I cannot acces the internet, I know
> its not a router problem because I am using it right now on this laptop
> to write this, I can acces the local network just fine, its just that I
> cant acces the internet.
>
> When I go to the device manager to see whats going on with the network
> device, when I click on properties for NVIDIA network controller
> (default from the mobo) it says there are no drivers installed for this
> device. But If i unplugg the IDE HDD it works fine and I can acces the
> net normally.
>
> I think that sums everything up, I hope somebody has any clue as to why
> this is happening, thanks a lot in advance and here are my comp specs
>
> MOBO - ASUS P5N-E SLI
> 6BG ram
> 1 IDE 200gb HDD
> SATA 300 gb HDD
> SATA 80 gb HDD (where vista lives)
> dual NVIDIA Gforce 9800
>
> Thanks
>
>
> --
> peanuthead

I read your description carefully - several times. It would be useful to
know how your various drives are cabled to the various MoBo connectors.

Since that MoBo has 4 SATA ports and 2 IDE, I would expect to see the drives
configured somewhat as follows:

The 80 GB SATA drive on SATA1 connector, the 300 GB SATA drive on SATA 2
connector; the PATA/IDE drive on the first IDE connector jumpered as master
(the jumper on the drive must match this assignment), the DVD/CD device on
the second IDE connector jumpered as master (the jumper on the drive must
match this assignment). Note that there are two ribbon cables used. That for
the IDE HD should be a 40-conductor type. A 20-conductor ribbon cable can be
used for the DVD/CD device. Only the end connectors are used in this
application.

The BIOS boot order should be set to Floppy (if there is one), DVD/CD,
SATA1. BIOSes vary in the location of these settings. For most, you set the
boot order and HD order separately. Check the MoBo manual whether you have
it as a paper copy or on-line.

Since you write that everything seemed to be working normally and do not
indicate what, if any, software or hardware changes were done recently, it
is difficult to say anything about what might have caused the problem.
Consequently, it is difficult to suggest what might need to be fixed.

So.... more details please.

For the moment, it seems that there is a problem, perhaps intermittent, with
the HD or associated connectors or controllers, or associated drivers. Not
much of a help, I know.

Good luck.
Let us know.

Tom Ferguson


"peanuthead" <guest@unknown-email.com> wrote in message
news:8556bd37ffb849fd611a4cd714dca71c@nntp-gateway.com...
>
> Hi,
>
> I have been working with vista x64 for several months now and
> everything seemed to work just fine up until recently when something
> really strange started happening.
>
> I have 3 physical HDDs 2 SATA and 1 IDE, vista is installed on the
> smallest SATA drive which is about 80gb and has no secondary partitions,
> the other SATA is 300gb and is split in half and the IDE drive is also
> split in half but none of them have any OS installed on them.
>
> One day I turned on my PC and discovered that the 2 partitions for the
> IDE drive were missing from the "Computer" screen, so I went first to
> the device manager to double check and the disk didnt show up in there
> either. After that I went to the admin tools in the disk management
> section and it was nowhere to be found.
>
> After many attempts of fiddling with it, in the BIOS and in vista
> itself i finally got the disk to show up again by connecting the IDE
> cable to the secondary IDE slot in the mobo but then a new problem came
> up and this one I have no idea how to fix or why its happening.
>
> Everything works fine except that I cannot acces the internet, I know
> its not a router problem because I am using it right now on this laptop
> to write this, I can acces the local network just fine, its just that I
> cant acces the internet.
>
> When I go to the device manager to see whats going on with the network
> device, when I click on properties for NVIDIA network controller
> (default from the mobo) it says there are no drivers installed for this
> device. But If i unplugg the IDE HDD it works fine and I can acces the
> net normally.
>
> I think that sums everything up, I hope somebody has any clue as to why
> this is happening, thanks a lot in advance and here are my comp specs
>
> MOBO - ASUS P5N-E SLI
> 6BG ram
> 1 IDE 200gb HDD
> SATA 300 gb HDD
> SATA 80 gb HDD (where vista lives)
> dual NVIDIA Gforce 9800
>
> Thanks
>
>
> --
> peanuthead