installing new hardware on XP Pro

Whenever I start windows, I get the "new hardware found" popup. The device controller has one of those great yellow question marks, and, since I cannot seem to use the firewire connection, I suspect the UFO is the firewire card. It's a cheap and simple IEE 1394a card connected to the PCI slot.

My motherboard is an ASRock ALiveNF6P-VSTA, and I'm running Windows XP Professional. The FireWire controller, according to Unknown Device Identifier, is a Via VT6306 Fire II 1394 OHCI Link Layer Controller.

I've looked everywhere for a driver, but can't seem to find one. What I've read is that drivers for the VT 6306 have been integrated in Windows since Win98... Any tips?

I'm also having trouble with the new SATAII drive I bought, a Samsung F1 HD103UJ. I'm hoping it will replace my current data drive, which is 4 years old, running very hot, and noisy. In the meantime, the OS is still on the primary SATA II drive I got a few months back, a Samsng Spinpoint T HD500LJ.

I plugged the drive in, and the BIOS recognizes its presence immediately. I enter windows, and the device manager confirms the drive is there. I fire up windows explorer, and the drive is nowhere to be seen :confused

All online articles and help threads that I could find, which discussed installing SATA drives on windows, tell me how to allow windows at installation to realize the drive is there or how to install windows xp or vista on a SATA drive. This is not my case. I have an installed system already.

Also, both SATA drives appear in the device manager as present, however, for some reason, they come up as "SCSI Disk device", which they obviously they aren't. Could these two problems be related in any way, you think?

 

pretty please?

 

Just a quick thought in passing.... you say the old drive is 4 years old??... is the MOBO?... might need flashing!! I only say this as your registering Suzzy not sata...

Sata drivers are normaly installed afresh on a system during XP install, you pop disk in and the info is loaded and a screen asks you to press F6 if you need to add 3rd party drivers the you normaly have them on a bootable floppy and you install them seperate to the bios befor the Microsoft install.

on a system already installed the sata drivers often install as part of the chipset install from the mobo disk.

Not much help sorry ... but its Friday evening and head is on shut down... will get back to you on it as will everyone else will...

Stephen.

 

To use the new drive you have to create a partition in it.

Type in to the run box

diskmgmt.msc

The window which opens will show your new drive with 'unallocated space' or 'free space'

Right click the free space and choose new logical drive
follow the wizard instructions to create and then format the drive.

Post again if you need more.


To find a driver for your firewire card, try clicking opening the properties dialog box in device manager.

Choose reinstall driver on the driver tab.

When the wizard opens allow the pc to search the internet for a driver. XPpro is pretty good at this.

 

hey!!! that worked!! thanks! :hyper

this, instead, didn't I had tried it before, and it hadn't worked either. The MoBo CD doesn't seem to have the driver either. Anything else I can try?

 

Firstly delete the firewire card in Device Manager.

Then physically remove it and look at it carefully. Note the number of the main chip(s) down. Are they really Via?

Then retry the card in a different pci slot.

When you reboot, go into the bios and check for any 1394 enabling switches, on the way to windows.

It is of course possible that your card is duff, can you try it in another pc?