Worst PC Problem For Me Ever

[Treeman]

Hi Jeramy,

I feel your pain! I too have a firewire card and an external Maxtor hard drive. When I upgraded to SP-2 this computer stopped seeing my external Maxtor drive. In drive management it would hang, then report the drive as, "unreadable, 0bytes, 0date, this device is working properly!"

I feel the reason for this is because Microsoft is using, "certified digitally signed drivers for ieee."

I tried renaming the SP2 cabs and reinstalling the old SP-1 drivers for firewire.

(if you don't rename SP2 cabs it will still stick the digital drivers back!)

I was able to then read, write, format, and copy files to the Maxtor from Windows Explorer, however the drive still showed up as unreadable in drive management.

I have moved on, reformatted my hard drives and reinstalled SP1. Everything works except for the Maxtor which I gave to a buddy. I have a new Mercury external firewire drive hooked up now without any problems.

Still I have until April to solve my problems before I'm forced to use SP2.

I have ordered a new firewire / usb combo card that states that is has passed the WHQL specs. Before I update to SP2, I will remove the firewire card and external drive. (I believe SP2 dorked the Oxford 911 bridge in the external Maxtor drive)

Then we shall see if SP2 & the new pci card will play nice. If it does I'll hook up my new external drive and see how that goes.

Here is the pci card I'm talking about:

Startech

If you look under the Tech Specs tab, you will see "Microsoft WHQL Certified."

I assume that since this card has passed the "Windows Hardware Quality Labs," designation it will accept the signed drivers.

Your milage may vary!

Good Luck,

Treeman

[Jeremy]

Well, it doesn't work on SP1 for me, either. So that rules out everything you explained for my case. I'm betting it was because of the poor layout of power cables I used to have. How naive I was!

I was about to ask you to tell me more about the renaming you did but my computer doesn't even detect my External HD at all. Your PC at least gives you an error message. I feel weird saying this but I'd love to get an error message regarding my Ext. HD!

Cheers,

Jeremy

PS: It's Jeremy. Not Jeramy.

[XtremeMaC]

more on the case, just for testing purposes take out your cd-rom and put your hdd in there and see if at least the hdd itself works...

i don't think u need to spend time on that renaming, i mean u said it worked on sp1, unless u're mistaken, or u forgot that u installed a driver when u were on sp1 etc, so if i were u i wouldn't even try that, i think he just did that bc only way to go back to sp1 with drivers, would be renaming the drivers.

[Jeremy]

i mean u said it worked on sp1

No, I didn't.

I don't know how to take the case off this harddrive.

HD Image #1

HD Image #2

[Treeman]

Jeremy,

The Maxtor DV drive you have is easy to open. Just get a flat bladed screwdriver and start prying stuff. It will come apart eventually!

This thread has gotten so long I didn't notice what version of XP your running.

SP-1 or SP2? Also what kind of firewire card?

Treeman

[Looneyboy784]

Sounds Like the freak accident in which 2+things fail at the same time happened to me once MB processor power supply and hard rive all failed within a week of each other

[Drewdatrip]

Jeremy-

Now that i see the particular drive your refering to, i have to inform you about my experinces with them.

A while back i worked on some side job in sound studio and one of the drives went and died when i was exporting some audio libraries. Being that it was like my first week and i was working with million doller equitment i fliped out! But i came to the conclusion that i did nothing wrong, so i apporched my employer and told him the drive just up and stoped working..he goes oh ya go throw it over there he point over and theres a stack of about 15 of them.

Aprently these particular models aftyer a few months of uses and overhearting would just up and break. After further inspection there is no internal heatsink or fan. The drives have high failure rates as it is, but with the added heat of the enclosure and moving around they fail in a relativly short amount of time.

Im sorry to say it but i think the drive is a goner.

Your last and only resort is cracking the seal on it and installing it in your case...maybe then it MIGHT come up in windows...but knowing those drives its a 100percent loss

|Drew|

[Jeremy]

Drew, well it looks like I got lucky because I broke through the case, took out some screws, removed some silver tape, a metal top and the cables from the back and hooked it up the cables I usually have my DVD-ROM hooked into, and it Works!!!

Now all I need is a new case with an extra drive bay.

As for the FireWire and my DVC...that still remains a problem.

However, I have discovered something new under SP2 in Device Manager that I believe is the source of my problem. Here is an image.

A very hardware-knowledgeable friend of mine (PuntoMX) gave me this info on this device. He points me toward a site to download the Chipset drivers for my motherboard but I have done that before and it didn't fix anything. Also, an INF update (INFINST.exe) which I have also done before and that didn't fix anything. Unless I didn't do it correctly? He says that there are bugs with the Dell 865/875 Chipsets and only an updated BIOS can fix them. I have flashed my BIOS with Dell's latest ROM for the Dimension 8300. Revision A07. I have a few things disabled in my BIOS. Only my Floppy Drive (since I removed it) and my Onboard Ethernet Controller.

We are currently having a detailed conversation on Triillian and he is helping me with my problem. I'll report back later.

Later: Well, I am now using my Onboard Ethernet Controller. I removed the PCI Ethernet Card and moved my Sound and FW Card down a slot. I also updated my Chipset Drivers. However, nothing has changed the FireWire situation. I'm going to bed. I hope more replies come in.

[XtremeMaC]

i'm glad u got your data back..

[Jeremy]

Yes, so am I. However, my FireWire still does not work after I:

1. Enabled Onboard Ethernet Controller

2. Moved the PCI slots one down each from my Video Card

3. Got Chipset Drivers that are more recent than the ones present on my Dell ResourceCD.

That LPC Controller - 24D0 still shows up as "Unknown Device" in DM.

I've at least confirmed that it isn't a IRQ/DMA issue. Thanks to PuntoMX for that.

This device is used for 8/16 Bit I/O.

Any other ideas?

[puntoMX]

He says that there are bugs with the Dell 865/875 Chipsets and only an updated BIOS can fix them.

Hold on... it´s not only DELL, it´s those i865 / i875 chipsets that have some problems when you use your old BIOSes. Looks like the times iNTEL started to use RAMBUS MEM.

[Jeremy]

Ok, did some more changes. I went into my BIOS and went into "Integrated Devices" and disabled Sound. This did more in Device Manager than I expected it to. There were "Multimedia Audio Controller", "PCI Input Device", and "Unknown Device". The unknown device was the LPC Controller - 24D0. All three of these are now gone. I assumed I had miraculously fixed everything and went to plug in my Camcorder into the FireWire and was very discouraged to see that it still didn't work. I then remembered to install my updated Chipset Drivers. That didn't do anything again. I am about to try several different BIOS settings in a different section. I'll report back.

Well, the changes I made in my BIOS where of the Parellel Port. It's default is PS/2 and I tried all the other while having the DVC turned on and plugged into the FireWire so if one of the changes should spark the fix, the Hardware wizard would pop up as soon as my Desktop loaded. No changes did so.

I also disabled the Serial Port. I don't know what this is but it doesn't seem to have affected anything and I figure that the more things disabled in my BIOS, the less my PC has to keep track of.

Anyway, I am completely out of ideas. I'd ask you guys for any last resort possible solutions but you'll tell me to go get another card and cable, eh?

Cheers,

Jeremy

So, nothing else guys? Drew? Mac? Treeman?

[bart of borg]

You still haven't said whether you have tried to use you DV in another machine.....I would think that I'd be doing that before I spent any more money....Take it in to a comp shop and ask them just to plug it in and see if the wizard pops up. If it does you know the problem is not the camaera.....

[Treeman]

SP2 for Firewire Sucks. my2cents! The work around is this:

Create a folder called Firewirefix on root of C:

Copy these files from C:\WINDOWS\Driver Cache\i386 in the sp1 cab, copy the

following files to that folder.

1394bus.sys

arp1394.sys

nic1394.sys

ohci1394.sys

Replace the new versions of them in the C:\WINDOWS\system32\dllcache

and C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers

To avoid having SP2 reinstall the new SP2 ieee drivers do this:

- temporarily rename the XP2.cab file (e.g. to XP2old.cab)

- doing the copy/paste as administrator under SAFE mode

- rebooting

Now you have the firewire SP-1 drivers running firewire instead of SP2's digitally signed drivers, your camera should work.

Last ditch:

Go to start, run,

type in:

regsvr32 %windir%\system32\qdv.dll

hit enter

(note: must be a space between regsvr32 and the first % sign.)

Treeman

[Jeremy]

Treeman, thank you for the last options. I have nLited my system. As a result, I do not have SP1.cab, SP2.cab or a DLLCache directory. I also do not have arp1394.sys on my Home SP1 CD. Any workarounds for my situation? Can you send me your SP1 copies of those sys files?

Treeman, I've been thinking...even with SP2 FireWire drivers and the complications you apparently had, didn't you at least get the New Hardware Wizard pop-up when you plugged your camera into your computer? You see with mine, I don't even get that.

I got the SP1 drivers from a friend and registered that DLL. My PC still does not recognise my DVC when connected to the FireWire port.

Well, is this the end of the road?