Help, Messed My PC Up A Bit

Batman2

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Hi I think I might of installed a wrong driver for my motherboard, then later did the Vista SP1 update, so can't go back to previous settings.

When I was installing new drivers for my motherboard from the MSI website it gave me the option to install raid drivers for SATA or IDE, I chose SATA, then I noticed that my DVD Writer is no longer recognised (has vanished)

My Hard Drive is connected to SATA 1 as primary.
My DVD Writer is connected to IDE as primary.

Then my PC started to lock up on boot up, took several ettempts to get to desktop sucessfully.

The thing is if I select raid in bios to IDE then my PC does not boot up correctly, keeps locking up.

If I disable raid in bios then I can boot up PC, but have no DVD-writer.

In my bios it says I have no DVD writer, only shows up for a second when booting up with raid set on.

The problem now is because I can't get my PC to work with DVD-writer I have no access to either repair my windows set up or install drivers again from motherboard cd.

my set up is as follows.

MSI P965 platinum (Socket 775) motherboard with latest bios installed.
Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 2.13GHz.
4GB RAM PC6400 Corsair XMS2 Pro.
XFX 7900GS 256MB PCIE Graphics card.
Windows Vista Home Premium 64Bit (SP1).
LiteOn DVD Writer.
Seagate 80GB SATA hard drive.

Any help and advice appreciated.

:lease:
 
Buy an external USB2.0 or Firewire 800 (if you have the port) Lite-on DVD Burner.
 
Buy an external USB2.0 or Firewire 800 (if you have the port) Lite-on DVD Burner.
This still dosen't fix the problem though, have you tried re-installing the motherboard drivers.

Curly
 
This still dosen't fix the problem though, have you tried re-installing the motherboard drivers.

Curly

I can only install some of the drivers which are from the website as my system tells me I have no CD/DVD drive, so can't install the drivers from my CD.

I can't install the raid drivers "Vista_JMicron_RAID_IDE" because it says "Install aborted because no raid detected", I have to disable it in BIOS otherwise my sytem will not boot. I must of had it enabled at some point prior to problems as I remember installing the "Vista_JMicron_RAID_IDE" drivers.

I also have to disable FAST BOOT in BIOS.

I think if the problem continues my best option will probably be to take it to a local PC shop and see if they can sort things out as I have no real need for an external DVD Drive.
 
From your current setup you should not be running any raid drivers of any description. That said your motherboard supports 2 different sets sata raids, intel's ICH8R for 6 (purple) of them and an additional single Jmicron (blue). The Jmicron chip also handles the IDE and this may well be where your problem has arisen.

Providing your sata cable for the drive is in the purple, not the blue sata connector, if not move to one of the purples, then start by removing any settings you have made in the bios to enable raid of any type. Save, reboot and once in vista remove any installed drivers or control software you have installed for raid. You will problably need to reboot again after that. Then you can look at downloading and installing any updated motherboard drivers.
 
From your current setup you should not be running any raid drivers of any description. That said your motherboard supports 2 different sets sata raids, intel's ICH8R for 6 (purple) of them and an additional single Jmicron (blue). The Jmicron chip also handles the IDE and this may well be where your problem has arisen.

Providing your sata cable for the drive is in the purple, not the blue sata connector, if not move to one of the purples, then start by removing any settings you have made in the bios to enable raid of any type. Save, reboot and once in vista remove any installed drivers or control software you have installed for raid. You will problably need to reboot again after that. Then you can look at downloading and installing any updated motherboard drivers.

My systems seems a little more stable at the moment, I downloaded the latest WHQL drivers for my graphics card from the XFX website as I read somewhere on another post about someone having similar lock-ups every 30 seconds or so.

Although that does not resolve the not being able to access my IDE DVD-Writer, I will give a go of what you said.

Thanks for the insight.
 
Can you access system restore?

:rolleyes:

The problem with that is the following.

When I updated some of my drivers (where I seem to of messed things up, lol) I noticed that windows was telling me there was a Systems update.

When I ran the systems update it told me to download and install Vista Service Pack 1. So any system restore I do now will only take me back a few days to when I installed Service Pack 1. I think this is a similar problem when we used to install service packs in XP.
 
From your current setup you should not be running any raid drivers of any description. That said your motherboard supports 2 different sets sata raids, intel's ICH8R for 6 (purple) of them and an additional single Jmicron (blue). The Jmicron chip also handles the IDE and this may well be where your problem has arisen.

Providing your sata cable for the drive is in the purple, not the blue sata connector, if not move to one of the purples, then start by removing any settings you have made in the bios to enable raid of any type. Save, reboot and once in vista remove any installed drivers or control software you have installed for raid. You will problably need to reboot again after that. Then you can look at downloading and installing any updated motherboard drivers.

OK just had a look, my SATA Hard Drive is connected to a purple connector.
RAID is disabled in my BIOS.

Had a quick look in Device Manager and can't find any reference to Raid Drivers.

Here is what Device Manager is telling me:-

ControlPanel1.jpg


ControlPanel2.jpg


ControlPanel3.jpg
 
Just another quick update.

Looks like that graphics card update did not help, system did freeze quite a few times, had to reboot.
I went in to BIOS Under RAID Controllers the options were:

1. Disable.
2. RAID.
3. IDE.

I chose IDE, when I rebooted the DVD-Writer was recognised, then spent about over an hour trying to get the system to boot in to windows.

Finally got it to desktop with DVD-Writer enabled, have installed the original INF drivers of the motherboard CD to system.

So it is currently working, will see how long this lasts, lol.

The good thing is I have backed up my cookies and Internet Favourites and exported Outlook all to external hard drive, so C: has just operating system and various installed programs.

From years of experience I keep all files on external Hard Drives just in case I have to do a clean install or if the main drive packs up.
 
Just read through seems you have got somewhere :) anyway I have always found the J micron controller a pain and never had any success running anything other than a dvd drive off one, iirc it's basicly a converter from sata to pata... so you need to run in ide mode, (no raid) and you should not need to load any drivers for it. good luck hope it's now sorted :)

Curly
 
Just read through seems you have got somewhere :) anyway I have always found the J micron controller a pain and never had any success running anything other than a dvd drive off one, iirc it's basicly a converter from sata to pata... so you need to run in ide mode, (no raid) and you should not need to load any drivers for it. good luck hope it's now sorted :)

Curly

Thanks for all the help everyone.

I dare not switch my PC off, lol. But I will have to switch it off tonight as it's gonna be another hot night I guess.

I will see in the morning when I try and breath life back in to the system.
Everything still running fine at the moment, no system freezes yet. :smashin:

I did notice when my system does lock up the hard drive activity light is lit up bright red, but not flashing, when things start to work again the activity light starts functioning like normal again.
 
Apologies, got a bit caught up yesterday and missed your later posts. Glad to hear its working, hope it carries on for you.:)

It’s always tempting to enable stuff if it’s there to see if there is are benefits;) I know from plenty of past headaches:(. There is a way to exclude a drive from a raid setup in the raid bios, but since you only had one drive there didn’t seem much point in that route. The raid bios can be entered after the motherboard bios is loaded. Usually something like Ctrl I or Ctrl J. The raid management software, if installed, would have been visible on the desktop or in the control panel.
 
Everything is still running silky smooth with no system freezes.

I have a feeling that the latest motherboard INF drivers may of been to blame as well.

You see when I was having problems before I did try and reinstall the latest motherboard INF drivers as they were still on one of my external drives, but they seem not to resolve the problem.
As soon as I managed to get my DVD drive working again I found and intalled the very first release of the drivers and everything seems stable now.
Which makes me wonder if there is a conflict with the new motherboard drivers...?

The only thing I have not done yet is go back in to the BIOS and re-enabled Fast Boot, a little worried about pushing my luck :suicide: as this used to stop me booting up at all when I was having problems.

Well at least I have saved myself some money.

:thumbsup:
 

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