PCTech Forums

Ok my pc is all messed up. A series of things have happened but I dont know if they are connected. Here is what happened..

My norton antivirus kept getting an error scanning my 2 hard drives. It couldnt finish a full system scan anymore. I never had a problem until then so I just reinstalled norton antivirus. It didnt work even after I tried reinstalling a few more times.

Then MY second hard drive started acting really really slow in certain folders. Finally after deleting a few files it started acting normal again. This is just a file hard drive and my win xp is installed on my original along with most of my other program files. They are both pretty full.

Then i got a new batch of DVD-Rs to burn with on my cendyne 105 dvd-r burner. Some of these discs were getting errors with my recording softare recordnow max. I hardly ever get errors so this was bugging me. I didnt think these were related.

Anyway after trying norton a few more times I ended up restoring to previous system restore point from a couple days beforeand even installing the 2003 edition of norton antivirus that came with a motherboard I had bought for a different pc. The scan went all the way through finally so I was happy.

A couple days go by After this and I started getting more errors when trying to burn dvd-rs. Pretty much all I was getting was coasters. So I downloaded a update for the software but that almost seemed to make it worse. OK so I read through some websites to go into my device manager on my control panel and change the DMA/PIOS option all to "DMA if available" under the Primary/secondary IDE devices tab. Anyway I messed something up because when I go to run recordnow max again it wont load at all. I tried restarting and same thing no matter what. Ok So I do another system restore to about a week ago before and when windows starts up it just hangs....no desktop icons or any taskbar are visible or able to be selected. It probably wasnt good but I end up reseting my system and it starts up fine. Norton antivirus isnt showing up though.Anyway I try running recordnow max again and it still doesnt work so I uninstall it. Then I try and go on the internet through my cable connection and I cant get on. My connection says its enabled but I notice it says no IP address for me yet I can still connect to the internet using my laptops wireless connection and the wireless router attached to my messed up pc. I cant connect to the internet anymore through the messed up pc anymore. So I try to do another system restore but when i select it in windows it doesnt do anything. When i select it again it just goes to a white window and my system freezes. I went to install norton antivirus 2003 again but I got a message saying it said it was already installed and then when I went to install it I got some kind of network folder error and it wouldnt install.

I really dont want to have to lose all my files on either hard drive so what can I do to fix everything? Also if I do have no other choice but to reinstall windows on my original hard drive can I still keep all my files intact on my second hard drive. Basically can I reinstall windows and fix my problem without formatting my second hard drive that only has files.

I am so confused as to what is wrong so any help is appreciated guys. Thank you.

damn...

Yeah... if your going to format... shove everything on ur HD2 and then switch back and forth accordingly.

There isnt much to go from that... you have so many little problems its hard to pin point and help with specifics.... name and explain some major problems and ill see what i can do.

You can try to repair Windows XP by starting your computer from the Windows XP CD-ROM, pressing ENTER to set up Windows XP, and then pressing R to repair the selected installation.

OK I did end up popping in the win xp cd and doing a repair install. That got system restore working again and i still have all my files but now I cant see my second hard drive. How do I make it recognized by windows without formatting it? I have tons of info on there and cant lose it. I need to be able to access all those files again. I eventually planned on moving it over to a new computer anyway because I thought I could do that once its already been formatted once and actually has files on it.

Also My internet connection still doesnt work.I dont understand It says my connection is enabled on network options but it says invalid IP address and has 0.0.0.0 for a address. I tried repairing it and it failed.The thing is I'm sending this email by way of a laptop with a wireless hookup to a router attached to that same computer but yet that computer wont work. I called my ISP and the lady said its probably the network card and I have to buy a new one but its a bit convenient that with all these problems my network card goes dead too.

This whole situation sucks because if the world was perfect I would have had a brand new pc now anyway but airborne express damaged it and it arrived doa. Now I have to wait god knows how long to get that claim settled and in the meantime this 4 year old computer is starting to get all kinds of troubles. I just recently had to replace the power supply.

You know thats the other tthing...even though I have a new power supply and all my fans work my pc seems hotter then it should be. The actual dvd drives are very hot. Doesnt seem normal.

Anyone have a suggestion? I dont really have the money to spare but I might have to just call one of these pc repair places that will come to your house.

Does the second hard drive show in the BIOS on boot up?
Can you see this drive in the Device Manager or in Disk Management?

it definately doesnt show through device manager or disk management. I looked in bios and I thought I saw it but now im not sure. See I installed a maxtor ata controller card at the same time when i installed this maxtor hard drive so I think what i saw being recognized was that card. Please tell me I havent lost all this data..

OK i forgot to tell you guys something. My second hard drive is attachd to a maxtor ATA controller because I ran out of IDE slots. Ok I called maxtor and they asked me if I had any service packs installed when I installed the second hard drive and I did so the guy thought I needed to install service pack 1 again because he thinks my controller card isnt being recognized because it needs new drivers. The thing is when I installed the card and hard drive it automatically detected the controller card and looking at my device manager it still detects it.

Also my card and even my hard drive are detected in bios yet I still cant get access to it. Im going to call maxtor again but do you guys think if I attached my second hard drive to same IDE cable with my first will it detect it? anything else???

Sorry for not getting back to you sooner but I have done a lot of research on you problem.
The Maxtor tech could be right about sp1, after you repair a Windows XP installation you have to reinstall the sp1 according to Microsoft. If you had sp1 installed before you added your ATA controller card and the second hard drive, then the drivers used for this card could have been upgraded from the sp1 and this could be why you cannot see your second drive.
Also have you tried to add you second drive through the “Add New Hardware” in your control panel?
Is this drive NTFS or Fat32?

OK I ended up installing service pack 1a and that didnt change anything so I ended up downloading new drivers for the controller card even though I didnt have to when I first installed. It worked! I got my second hard drive back. Thank god for that.

Now I have to figure out this internet problem and also 2 software problems. I cant install norton antivirus because it says its already installed but when I try to remove whatever is left of an old install it wont let me even though theres no norton antivirus actually installed that i can use anyway.
The other software problem or so I think its software is my recording software. When I go to use recordnow max it just freezes at startup. This is the same thing it started doing right befoe I did the repair reinstall of winxp.

Also my computer just seems slow compared to usual. When it first starts up and I go to access anything it kinda freezes for a little bit and thats even after I wait like 15 minutes after startup.

Well I’m glad that you can now access your second hard drive
Now for your internet connection; I would use the Device Manager to uninstall the drivers for your network card then remove the network card from the Device Manager altogether, now reboot your system and let windows reinstall your network card. You will probably need to setup TCP/IP for you network card according to your ISP.

As for Norton there is a removal tool available from there website. It is called Rnav2003.exe, run that and then you should be able to reinstall Norton.

As for you burning software Recordnow, I am not familiar with this software but I would suggest that you uninstall this also and then reinstall also check to see if there is a newer version available I think 4.5 is the newest version according to there website.

Ok I tried uninstalling the network card drivers and then restarting windows. IT detected the card fine but still wont connect to the internet. It still says invalid ip address. I guess I will just have to buy a new card even though if it doesnt work I dont understand how windows detects it and in network connections it says my local lan is enabled.

I downloaded that norton tool but havent tried it yet.

Also I forgot when my recording software starting causing problems I was reading somewhere that changing the DMA/PIO settings on your whichever IDE(primary or secondary) you dvd burner is on can help fix problems. Well I changed it but now im not sure if I changed the right IDE properties through the device manager. Worse is I dont remember how the settings were originally on both primary and secondary IDE. Ive messed with both and changed them around to see if anything would make a difference so my software wouldnt freeze up at start but nothing fixed it.

Ok um just an update....

Used that Norton uninstall tool and I successfully uninstalled and reinstalled norton antivirus. Thanks for that heads up.

Also with my internet connection problem. It just started working again all of a sudden. I was sitting here using my laptop over the same connection and all of a sudden my desktop connection just came on. That is really weird isnt it?

So my only problem that remains is my recordnow max software. I unsintalled it again and Im going to attempt to reinstall again after everything else seems to be back to normal anyway.

I had the same thing once with my burner. Firts it gave all those error. i tried burning on a lower speed. it worked for a couple of weeks and then it just went down. can't read cd's and stuff.

for you problem try a diffrent software like nero or easy cd creator 6 or the free tool cd clone. if you still have errors when burning try burning on a lower speed.