03GrandAmGT Posted May 19, 2006 Share Posted May 19, 2006 again everyone.Today I opened my HTPC up for the weekly cleaning, everything went fine with that. Cleaned, put everything back together and fired it up. Well sorta, windows boots fine, everything works. Problem I am having though is when it booted and got to the desktop, it starts searching for a PCI device driver. This has never happened before, so I went into device manager. Low and Behold a nice little yellow exclamation mark for PCI Serial port (see attached image). Now nothing hardware wise has been CHANGED, and again everything is working KNOCK ON WOOD . I rebooted the machine and while the initialization of the Bios scan was showing on the screen I paused it just to see the PCI scan. I have even cleared the bios to see if that would fix it NOPE. I even unpacked all of the driver packs from Bashrat and threw them on a dvd just to see if the system would pick something up and still NO GO.This is what it shows.Slot 8 Bus 1 Device 10 Funct. 0 ID Simple com. controllerWell that would be great EXCEPT are you ready for this I don't have no STINKEN com. controller!! Last time I saw this error was many moons ago on a friends machine that I was helping him with and it turned out to be a issue with the modem, ok that's great and all. But I don't have a modem on this box and the only thing that is on the PCI bus that I have put in myself is Lan Card (Linksys LN100TX) and a TV Tuner card (Hauppauge PVR 250). My system appears to work fine, Live TV, sound everything so why is this happening?? And before anyone says well it's working so don't worry about it. IT BUGS me as this could be the start of something else and for me packing Murphy's Law in all my pockets lately, something sure as HE** will break. Below are the system specs.Home Theatre SystemMOBO: Abit AN7 CPU: AMD 3200XPRAM: 512 Megs Ram Vid. Capture: PVR 250VGA: MSI NX6600GT ViVoDVD Player: Sony DDU1615OS:XP SP2 APP/SW: myHTPC/Meedio 1.38DirectTV: RCA 486 Satellite RecieverMITSUBISHI WS-A55THANKSjd Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LLXX Posted May 19, 2006 Share Posted May 19, 2006 You might've moved a jumper whilst cleaning the machine, which enabled the onboard serial port. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
03GrandAmGT Posted May 19, 2006 Author Share Posted May 19, 2006 You might've moved a jumper whilst cleaning the machine, which enabled the onboard serial port.Thanks for the reply LLXX. I might think it would be the jumpers, but I do 2 things when I build a box. 1. Once the MOBO is up and running the way it should I print the MOBO jumper list out and tape it to the case side. 2. I place a dab of RTV "Silicone Adhesive" on the bottom of the jumper to securely "glue" it to the MOBO. I have had too many jumper issues in the past so this is what I have been doing for about the last 6 years.Any More suggestions??????Thanksjd Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
puntoMX Posted May 19, 2006 Share Posted May 19, 2006 Flash the BIOS and see if that helps. What happens if you rip out your PCi cards? Still you see it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
03GrandAmGT Posted May 21, 2006 Author Share Posted May 21, 2006 Flash the BIOS and see if that helps. What happens if you rip out your PCi cards? Still you see it?Well finally. Yes the system is back in operational state WITHOUT the **** searching for a driver. Yes, puntoMX I did flash the bios several times with no luck. Yes I ripped everything out and it was still there. I removed ALL power including the cmos battery still no go. What did I do. Ha, this is frigging unbelievable. I ripped the power cord out of the back pulled the battery out and went to bed. I let the system set overnight, hooked everything back up this morning and all is well. I really find this STRANGE as there are no CAPS on the motherboard that should hold a charge for that long, espcially when you discharge the cmos. Like I said in the first post I have Uncle Murphy in all my pockets.Thanks for all the tips and ideas.jd Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LLXX Posted May 21, 2006 Share Posted May 21, 2006 (edited) The CMOS on some machines has "hidden options" that are not accessible by BIOS, and doing a BIOS reset won't clear those hidden options either. These are factory-set options that really do not need to be changed; in your case, the mobo probably had the wiring for a serial port, but there is no port and thus one hidden option setting in the CMOS is used to disable the detection of one. There is probably another subversion of your mobo with a serial port; for the manufacturer, it's as simple as deciding whether or not to solder on the external connector and a few other components, then setting this hidden option appropriately.A stray static surge or similar must've flipped one of those hidden setting bits, causing the (nonexistent) port to be enabled. Completely draining the charge from the CMOS chip (this *can* take a while even after the battery is removed - shorting the battery terminals with the power off and the battery removed is the fastest way) allowed it to revert back to the standard settings. Edited May 21, 2006 by LLXX Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
puntoMX Posted May 21, 2006 Share Posted May 21, 2006 I would think that with a BIOS flash it would have been reset too, but I know that some flash programs don’t write new code when it’s not necessary. Also the "reset BIOS" function should have reset the BIOS, hidden or not hidden settings; Looks more like a bug from ABIT. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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