The last time I seen this problem was with Win95a and it happened quite frequently and mostly with Packard Bell's. If memory serves me well I booted in safe mode went to the device manager and to the system properties and deleted every entry listed under "System" (makeing sure that first I had all the drivers for the system)rebooted the computer and let it detect all the devices on the MOBO again rebooted and it worked fine. You can try this first though,(it will lock up your computer and you will have to do a HARD shutdown); boot Windows in normal mode and goto the device manager and delete the Parent IDE driver which will lock up the computer and perform the Hard Shutdown, sometimes that will fix it when it refinds the IDE controller, if it asks you for the Windows disk your hurtin unless you put the CAB files on the hard drive cause it's not gonna see the CDROM untill it loads the ATAPI drivers (catch22). If you didn't put the CAB files on the H/D then you have to do it the hard way...when it asks you for the location of the files click on the Details tab and browse it to the location on the last line in the details section, usually Windows\system or Windows\system32\drivers or Windows\help or Windows\system32, it will pickup the drivers again then reboot and see if that fixes the problem...one other thing (Try this before you do anything else), right click on "My Computer" select properties then click on the "Performance" tab and see if it says something like this "!One or more devices are running in DOS compatability mode" This is a flag telling you that the 32bit drivers aren't loading make sure that the "Autoexec.bat" entry mscdex.exe entry is rem'd out, it should look something like this:
REM ***By Windows*** C:\mscdex.exe d:/mscd001
If the REM isn't there it the system is loading the DOS drivers and their staying resident when Windows loads. I hope this has helped you and others as well. GL
