[jumper]

Jonssen, on 11 December 2012 - 08:20 PM, said:

+ if detection problems for other devices persist, remove ALL hardware (especially mainboard!) drivers in Safe mode - ok this is the bit I haven't done for fear of not being able to get it back up. I can do it, but I just need to pull (back-up) some data off the HDD before I try (which means removing the HDD and taking it to another machine as there's no external access to this PC HDD at the moment - no Ethernet, no SCSI, no USB)

This step should also be preceded by backing up the registry (so it can be restore later if things get worse rather than better) and the BIOS reset to defaults per RJARRRPCGP's post (first writing down the current settings per buyerninety's post).

Then to state it more clearly:

+ if detection problems for other devices persist, cold boot into Safe Mode and remove ALL hardware drivers (especially for the mainboard!)

Followed by a cold system restart / normal boot with hardware autodetect.
Control Panel->Add new hardware can be invoked if anything doesn't autodetect.

[Drugwash]

Try a thorough HDD scan (and repair) using HDAT2, HDD Regenerator or any other similar tool out there (if any). There may be bad sectors in critical system files that just break hardware detection and/or other important functions of the OS.

Using MSConfig or any other similar tool (I use CodeStuff Starter), check if there's any unknown/suspect file(s) running at boot time. Disable everything that doesn't look critical for a normal operation (post the list of applications and services here, when in doubt). There could be either malware or a bad driver messing with your system.

If you can borrow a small test HDD from someone, disconnect your current HDD, connect the new one, perform a OS install from scratch with all other hardware connected and if detection works OK and you get everything in Device Manager (you may install required drivers if you want, to make sure), then you can rule out a hardware failure (except maybe for your original HDD that you have previously removed). On the other hand, if you can take your original HDD to another machine (careful not to boot from it!), then you may use that system's tools to check drive integrity and any possible software intrusions.

I believe everything else has been covered in the previous posts. Good luck!

EDIT:

Random browsing through the 9x section brought me to a topic that just might be of help here: ifsmgr.vxd and zero-byte .inf files

This post has been edited by Drugwash: 27 December 2012 - 01:04 AM

[Jonssen]

submix8c, on 10 December 2012 - 09:09 AM, said:

...hence the suggestion BOOT TO SAFE, DELETE ALL, REBOOT, FORCE "ADD NEW HARDWARE"...

OK, back to this today after some travels and a break...

A combination of this, repeatedly, plus repeated registry re-sets to re-run hardware detection http://support.microsoft.com/kb/317187 and a multitude of re-boots eventually seems to have got things back in order (touch wood). Took about six hours!

Tested most functions and it seems to be all working without needing to do a Jaz restore. And still so much faster than my more current PCs which seem to take an age to perform a simple task! I think I'll upgrade the second HDD to something bigger as when backing up I found that the email archieve now runs to over 6Gb!

So, thanks to all for the input and hopefully it'll be good for a while. :-)