How Do I?

[psnathan]

Hi,

How do I identify a device in the Windows' Device Manager that has a yellow exclamation mark on it? Say it is not a device from any of the daughter cards you've inserted into the motherboard. Is there any way of finding out what the device is?

 

[jlanka]

What is the device called? I usually do a search on deja.com (now google) and can find a lot of information based on the string listed as the name.

<i>It's always the one thing you never suspected.</i>

 

[girish]

how did it crop up?
usually yellow icon on a device means the device is bad, or its not present (while the driver is)

what hardware do you have?

you might have some motherboard resource not known to windows, just like win98 does not know the 810 firmware hub that always shows up as a ghost device. updating the inf files usually solve such problems.

the worst thing is, windows just says its a "Unknown device" so you really have to keep guessing.

girish

<font color=blue>die-hard fans don't have heat-sinks!</font color=blue>

 

[psnathan]

OK. Sorry for the lack of info. Actually, this is my second attempt at finding a solution for the problem I have. My initial posting did not get any response at all so I tried this one.

Ok. I'll quote my first posting "Subject: P4 system problem" here again to give a clearer picture.

"I just assembled a Pentium 4 system. The specification is as follows:

Asus P4T mobo, Intel P4 1.4GHz, Samsung 64MB RDRAM x 4,MSI GeForce2 Pro 64MB, 20GB Maxtor DiamondMaxPlus60, Creative SB Live Value, Asus 50x CDRom Drive, Enlight P4 ATX12V Case.

Now to the problem, I assembled everything and booted the system using WinME Startup Disk. I ran FDisk and made a single 20GB partition. Then I tried to install WIN2k Pro by going to the \i386\ folder in WIN2k CD and running winnt.
After the Windows did some detecting, finally it said something like "windows boot loader failed".

Next I tried creating the Windows 2000 Pro 4 disk boot disks from the win2k CD. When I ran the disks, after inserting all 4 floppy disks, again the message "windows boot loader failed" appeared.

Next, I tried booting from the Win2k CD. Everything went fine this time and I managed to install WIndows 2000 Pro.
So, I tried to install the Intel inf update utility and the system froze....I mean really froze, I can't even invoke task manager to shut it down, I had to reset the system.

Next I tried looking in Device Manager. In the Device manager there was a pci device with the yellow exclamation mark. But I have not installed any pci cards yet, even the sound card is not installed. The Only card installed is the MSI AGP card.

I didn't install the ATA100 drivers because the readme.txt in Intel inf driver zip file says I should not install the ATA100 driver until I have installed the inf drivers.
It's been 2 days and I still couldn't install the Intel inf drivers. The system is running fine, I installed all the programmes and everything is fine.

How do I install the inf drivers and the ATA100 driver. Please help. Thank You."


Now, I'll answer "Jlanka"'s question:

1. The yellow exclamation device on Device Manager is called "PCI device". But the problem is there is no pci cards installed. The only device installed in the mobo is the MSI GeForce Pro 64MB AGP card. Note: The device appeared before I inserted the SB Live Value card.

I hope I give a clearer picture of my problem now. Thanks "Jlanka" and "girish" for taking your time to read my problem.
Please reply.

 

[girish]

the "ghost" pci device is surely something on the motherboard, and only the inf update will remove it.
how are you updating the inf? running setup.exe from the inf directory on the motherboard cd? actually thats the only better way to do it.

actually i dont have the P4T and Win2k combo so i cant really comment on the issue, but i guess try doing the inf update with no tray apps and startup apps loaded.

if it doesnt work, try installing the ATA drivers on the system as it is.

if it doesnt take the inf update, i guess its the installation gone bad somewhere. try doing it again with a smaller system partition.

girish

<font color=blue>die-hard fans don't have heat-sinks!</font color=blue>

 

[Morwing]

Here's a wild guess... If you have an integrated soundcard on your motherboard? If so, try disabling it from BIOS...

- Jan

 

[jlanka]

But the problem is there is no pci cards installed

But there are PCI devices. For instance, your IDE controllers are PCI devices. It's got to be something onboard thats being detected but isn't known to ME (nothing like restating the obvious, huh?)

<i>It's always the one thing you never suspected.</i>

 

[psnathan]

I posted this same posting on Sharkey Extreme's Forum....and I think I've found the culprit. Someone suggested that the pci device is probably the ATA100 controller onboard the motherboard. It seems the original Windows 2000 release had compatibility issue with ATA66 and ATA100 controllers. The same person also pointed out that the Service Pack 1 or Service Pack 2 should be able to fix it. I have been downloading SP2 from Microsoft for 9 hours now and have got 5% of the 101MB file left to download. Hope this should fix it. Drop by once in a while, I'll update on the progress. Thanks for your time.

 

[psnathan]

Well, I'm back. Nope, I tried installing Windows 2000 SP2 the problem is still there. The "PCI device" is still under unknown device category with the yelloe exclamation mark on it.

Let me give you the details of the device.

Device : Other devices.
Location : PCI bus 0, Device 31, Function 3
Interupt Request: 10

Still can't install the Intel INF Update Utility. When ever I ran the software, windows 2000 will freeze. Have to press the reset button to reboot, can't go to task manager to shut it down because the whole system is totally dead.

Anybody have any suggestion? Is there a way to manually install the motherboard devices one by one? Can someone using the Asus P4T motherboard give me the list of devices installed by looking at Device Manager. Please help. If there is some serious motherboard problem I want to change it immediately for a new one from the retailler.

Please help. Thank you.