New hardware detected?

I turned on my comp before and about 5 notices came up saying windows has detected new hardware. I was like WTF is this BS? I have added either a program or anything at all in like a month and now suddenly this. Any ideas as to what it is? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/help.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif

Honestly I dont know what would for sure cause that, but COULD a dead or dying battery on a Motherboard cause such a thing? Does that battery store the information of whats connected to the board while its off? Or does it only keep the time as the computer is disconnected from a power source? If its only an OS thing that would cause this, perhaps you have a virus that somehow deleted all the Hardware information that was stored somewhere in the OS? Sounds weird, thats for sure. Did the parts that were 'found' work immediatly and were the parts that were found legit hardware in your machine and not bogus crap thats not really there?

Cameron

It seemed like bogus crap to me. I never even heard of the stuff it was saying.

I had that once and my modem had died and no longer was being recognized properly by the pc but still alive enough to transmit information that some sort of device was present.

Oh, also happened with a USB flash card reader. I knew enough from what it was saying (removable device) that it was trying to read the card reader. I thought it was a corrupt driver but system would not take the driver. I then tried card reader on another machine where I then realized it was bad.

So maybe you have a piece of previously working hardware that has given up the ghost.

Huh, this is interesting. I kinda have thoughts that its a virus. Do a scan of some sort for that and spyware. If its multiple items, then it doesnt seem like a hardware problem such as the battery.

Cameron

I just did a scan before I posted this topic. I didn't have any spyware or viruses detected. I have norton antivirus and aol's spyware protection thing.

multipe items would say bad bios setup back up battery to me.

Isn't hardware detection of this sort more of an OS thing, rather than a BIOS thing?

Yea, the OS will report it to you, but the BIOS will report it to the OS. If it were a battery issue, or another hardware issue, the BIOS would report what its told to the OS. Therefore, you are told invalid information. But then again, would any hardware issue have the ability to do all this? I could understand 1 or 2 parts being newly detected, but 5 or 6?? I am not so sure thats a hardware issue.

Cameron

my computer detects the drives and the vid card before windows loads
I think if the bios is reset windows reinitalizes hard ware

I just woke up-brain not fully on-biological hardware problem.

Let us know if you figure it out. Has your pc clock been keeping accurate time? Sometimes they will become erratic when the motherboard battery is low.

check your device manager and see what have any question marks and or exclamation points

I turned on the comp this morning and nothing out of the ordinary, guess the problem fixed itself. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon3.gif Yes my computer does keep accurate time and I didn't see anything strange in the device manager.

Go to:

Control Panel
System
Hardware
View
Select "Show Hidden Devices"

You'll see a bunch of things you normally won't see. These are "ghosts" of devices previously installed and removed or other functions of installed devices.

Sometimes a device (video, sound, whatever) gets interrogated by the OS at boot and may report capabilities which are present but not in use. When this happens, you'll see those "New Device detected" messages.

For instance, a disabled motherboard resource like an audio adapter that you've turned off to allow installation of a better quality after market card might cause this to happen.

Normally, this doesn't happen but occasionally there are bugs in the device post code that allow a different entry point than what is normal for that machine configuration. In general, it's pretty much a harmless happening unless the system goes bonk as a result (very rare).

When you show all those hidden devices, you can safely remove those which you know are not installed. Maybe an old video, modem or sound card. Be aware though, the system may put them back again if the hardware is still present.

For the most part, don't worry about it unless it somehow affects your machine.

Al

I had this happen when the Ethernet port went out on a mobo. Don't know if that's what caused the problem, but it was definatelt strange.

[ QUOTE ]
Al_Havemann said:
Go to:

Control Panel
System
Hardware
View
Select "Show Hidden Devices"

You'll see a bunch of things you normally won't see. These are "ghosts" of devices previously installed and removed or other functions of installed devices.

Sometimes a device (video, sound, whatever) gets interrogated by the OS at boot and may report capabilities which are present but not in use. When this happens, you'll see those "New Device detected" messages.

For instance, a disabled motherboard resource like an audio adapter that you've turned off to allow installation of a better quality after market card might cause this to happen.

Normally, this doesn't happen but occasionally there are bugs in the device post code that allow a different entry point than what is normal for that machine configuration. In general, it's pretty much a harmless happening unless the system goes bonk as a result (very rare).

When you show all those hidden devices, you can safely remove those which you know are not installed. Maybe an old video, modem or sound card. Be aware though, the system may put them back again if the hardware is still present.

For the most part, don't worry about it unless it somehow affects your machine.

Al

[/ QUOTE ]Nice call, forgot about that one Al.

If You have a loose USB cable etc. That will cause the problem.Also reseat all Your cards in the computer as a bad connection will also do this.

Related to the hardware manager, maybe a new driver was installed via Windows update.
I know that when I've had '?' devices, or devices that use the default MS driver for a device (like USB on the motherboard), these will get redetected when you either delete them or install the correct driver.
For the latest dell I bought (and rebuilt from scratch), I had to go to Intels site to get the MB chipset drivers. When I used these to replace the default MS drivers, I was able to use USB2... not just USB1.1

T.