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Phrazer
02-09-2002, 04:06 PM
I just bought an Epox 8HKA+ running an Athlon XP 1600 from McGlen.com. System came assembled with AOpen CD-Rom, Floppy, and 256mbDRAM.
I installed Hard Drives (WD & Quantum), Gainward AGP Card, NIC, and WinXP Pro.
Everything was running satisfactory until I went away for a few hours. I set the system to go into standby mode. When I returned I tried to eject a software disc I had in the CD-Rom. No response. The light was on, on the CD-Rom but "nobody was home". I checked the drive status in Windows Explorer, but it didn't even show the CD-Rom drive. Needless to say "given Windows history" I rebooted to see if the drive would reappear. During boot I noticed the BIOS didn't recognize a CD-Drive connected, and when Windows did come up neither did its Device Manager.
So, I went to Epox.com for some answers and checked out the latest BIOS Flash Updates. I was running the 11/02/2001 BIOS Version and after reading about the upgrade support for CD-ROM UDMA mode, I thought version 01/08/2002 might possibly iron out the problem.
After downloading & extracting the files to floppy I rebooted to DOS prompt and thusly flashed the BIOS per Epox instructions.
After all was done and reboot, not only is my CD-Rom still lost, I have now lost the floppy drive leaving me unable to "flashback" to the previous BIOS status. I tried disconnecting and reconnecting the CD-Rom & Floppy drive several times with still know recognition.
Nevertheless I have a real dilema, does anyone know a way out of this? Should I resort to sending my system back to McGlen for exchange? Any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks.:confused:

Antix
02-09-2002, 11:31 PM
Well, you may not be happy about this answer, but it sounds like your windows registry is kaput.

You can try to format the HDD, put Windows back in, the load the proper VIA 4-in-1 drivers into Windows prior to installing any hardware drivers or even touching DirectX. These drivers are for the KT266A chipset.

See what happens afterwards. If you are still not able to properly access to your CD-RW/ROM/DVD or HDD or even the floppy, you may consider the motherboard to be shot.