Ok..so my dad calls me and tells me that his computer has stopped working, I ask him whats going on, he tells me he cant get online...So i drive 25mins to my parents house....
Here is what i discover....None of his optical drives are showing up??? None of the internal devices are showing up(sound card, ethernet card, etc)..And windows will not allow me to use his firewall protection??? Any ideas what could be wrong??
I was going to reinstall windows, but no way since the computer will not recognize any disks or external devices....???
yes killa is correct, your mobo could cause this if it went bad......but its strange because usually when this happens it also affects the hard drive...this could be a ram issue as well....start testing varialbles........ aim-surferinmichigan
Maybe a power surge killed the controllers on his mobo if they're not showing up on the bios..i've seen it happen before...i had to basically build a client a brand new dell because a power surge killed their ram, video card, mobo, hdd, cd rom drives, everything except the psu ironically. Make sure ur dad has a good quality surge protector so it wont happen again if thats what it is.
The ram is still reading the same?? He has the same surge protectors I use at work..There really good...
Im just really lost...because I hooked up my flash drive to the usb and it came up...but i hooked up my external dvdrw and nothing?? Same port and everything
i dealt with this a few diff times, i'll be damned if i know what causes it but only way i got around it was to use floppy drive and old school F DISK method. it's possible maybe the littile battery onthe mobo is bad anmd actin up or his power supply is goin. ether way try kickin it to safe mode or something in that range and f disk the biotch. if u f disk it windows should be able to install fine. if not theres a good chance u need to create a disk utility on the flash drive to get it back in order. it could be a virus or update that got really screwed up and cause stuff to go out but unlkely. i say it's the bios battery actin up.
You need to elaborate further. What did you check in the BIOS setup? Does it list everything in the computer? Is the network card built in on the motherboard or is it an external card? Did you open the case and see if the cables are all plugged in properly? Did you try safe booting? Under the device manager, do you see question marks on any of the devices? If you're seeing the internal hard drive, then have you tried connecting the cd/dvd drive on the same cable? You will need to configure it as slave.
It could very well have a bad motherboard. But I would first suspect a virus, as most issues are software related not hardware.
Some sort of virus could have f*cked up window's driver database, and other system files. I would try to install windows over itself, without a reformat. If that doesn't work, back up data, reformat, and reinstall. If still nothing, you know it's hardware, probably motherboard.
P.S. Im a CS major and you can PM me about computer issues if you want.