Firewire external hard drive no longer recognized

Hello,

I have a 1 terabyte external hard drive that I have been using with my computer for about six months now. I have had it connected through my pc's on-board firewire port using windows XP sp3 and it has worked perfectly the whole time.

Recently I installed a Netgear wireless internet adapter in my last PCI slot and since then I have been having trouble with the external drive: explorer.exe would freeze up and turning off external drive would unfreeze it or I would click on the drive in MY Computer and then explorer.exe would freeze instead of opening it. These problems were intermittent for a few weeks until finally a couple days ago windows stopped detecting the hard drive at all through the firewire and it no longer appears in My Computer. It still detects the drive through USB and I can access it and the files are all still working (about 400GB of data on the drive), but the firewire does absolutely nothing. I checked the IRQs for the 1394 adapter and the Netgear internet card and they're different so I don't think there is a conflict. I don't have another computer/laptop with firewire so I can't check it that way. What should I do?

I don't want to plug another device into my USB, I already have too many devices on USB as it is. Please help! Thank you.

 

Just a bump. Can no one help me? Is this maybe the wrong forum section? I thought it might go in software but I wasn't sure. Please help!

 

Try removing the firewire port in device manager and let windows re-install it.

Could just be coincidence that it started playing up at the time you installed the other card
and you have a bad lead.

 

What Netgear pci wireless card did you get? Reason I ask is that the chipset on some of the Netgear wireless cards is c**p.

I appreciate that you checked for IRQ conflict and found none but would suggest that you firstly remove to Netgear pci card and see whether the freezes, etc are resolved.

If it does, then you will need to get another pci card. I use an Edimax card which has a Ralink chipset and causes no such issues.

Good Luck

 

Thank you both for your responses!

@voodoo
I removed the device and restarted and it was reinstalled. I then plugged in my firewire drive and nothing happened. Tried it a couple times and still nothing. Sad face...

@risk_reversal
I have a Netgear wireless-N 300 PCI adapter (wn311b). It works great and has been a dream come true as far as internet is concerned. The freezing up was resolved once the computer stopped recognizing my firewire drive, but I am willing to try disconnecting the card and I will post again with the results. Could a bad PCI chipset really mess with my computer that much (freeze explorer, etc)?

I am still open to other suggestions if anyone else would be willing to help me! Thank you!

 

If the pc was working fine with no issues (inc the fw external hdd) prior to installation of the Netgear PCI card and then immediately subsequent to the Netgear install issues surface such as the ones you have described, then the Netgear card is responsible.

It is possible that the PCI chipset on the Netgear card maybe having some type of conflict with the mobo. Just take the card for a while and try the external and see if the pc still has issues.

As regards the WN311B, looks like it has a Broadcom chipset which are generally fine but this is a wireless N card which can cause issues (and more so because it's a Netgear product).

Any reason you chose this card (N as opposed to a G) ie do you have a LAN network and transfer large files between pcs.

Good Luck