Hi guys,

After countless problems with my computer in the past few weeks, I've finally made a bit of progress and just have a few 'niggles' to sort out before it's working correctly.

1) Since a format and XP re-install the front USB port don't seem to be working, this is odd as I've never had a problem in the past, and also when I did a similar re-install a few days ago they were working fine too, for some reason now the computer isn't picking them up, although the rear USB ports work just fine.

2) My ethernet card is showing up as being not installed in device manager and has a yellow exclaimation mark by it. The internet seems to work fine, I can download files at the usual speed and the network is fine too. Only problems I'm having is with uTorrent, which is definitely machine specific because I tried using the exact same setup on my parents PC and it was downloading at 100kb/s, on my computer it runs at not even 1kb/s and rarely connects to trackers :P It's a Marvell ethernet card, I've tried the drivers that came with the motherboard, I've tried the ones on the Asus site and I also tried the ones on the Marvell site too, it just won't install properly!

3) If you have some files on your C: drive, and you do a full NTFS format of that drive and re-install Windows; what are the chances that you can recover some of those files from the previous install? ;p I kinda lost my entire 'My Documents' plus a few other useful files, oops.

Thanks!

1) Check the usb ports are enabled in bios.

2) That sounds very odd, especially since the internet is working, are you sure there isn't another ethernet card in the system? As for the torrent downloads have you tried forwarding the ports If you're connected to a router/hardware firewall of some sort?

3) Data recovery on the cheap really depends a lot on luck, you will probably be able to recover it depending on if the files were over writen, I suggest trying a free data recovery utility such as PC Inspector

Hey blize,

Welcome to PCHF.

for 1) See if you have any unknown devices in Device Manager, and also check to see which ones are listed. If it is not in Device Manager in some form, then your problem is most likely hardware related, and the re-installation of XP is co-insidental. Double check the connections going to the front USB, and also double check they are enabled in BIOS (altough this would normally affect your rear USB connections too).

2) When you install the Marvell card, what exactly happens, is the installation successful or do you receive an error message? What is the exact model of this card? Can't really help you with Torrent's though I'm afraid due to PCHF Rules.

3) It depends on how much disk activity has taken place since the disk was formatted. I would say that if you have since re-installed Windows as possibly additional software? The chances are very slim. The best software I've used for data recovery is R-Studio, however it does cost around $50.

EDIT: Sorry Leb, didn't realise you posted.

Brilliant, thank you very much for the very prompt replies guys!

Regarding the USB ports, there's nothing showing in device manager and I'm pretty sure the connections wouldn't of become lose, but now I think about it I did have to reset the CMOS yesterday so there's a very good chance that's where the problem lies, will check it as soon as I get home!

Regarding the Ethernet card, there's definitely only one card which is built into the motherboard, all of the PCI slots are completely empty. It is indeed working fine, although sometimes it'll fail to connect to websites (quite rare since I did this second format) and torrents are massively slow and rarely connect to the trackers. I've forwarded the port and it didn't really change anything, like I said though on my parents PC uTorrent runs just fine, so I guess it isn't the fault of the router or my internet connection. Not sure of the exact model either I'm afraid, nor can I recite the error message, but it basically says it failed to install the driver.

Finally, regarding the data recovery, I'm not in massive need of the files since I do have backups of most of it although some are very old revisions that'd need a lot of updating! I'll try PC Inspector though and see how it goes, if that doesn't work I'll put a little more thought into it and consider getting R-Stuio.

Once again a massive thanks for the great replies, really appreciate it!

Yeah, the USB problem is more than likely something to do with the BIOS, atleast, that's where I'd put my money

As for the BitTorrent, Normally BT uses a port range, ie more than one port so most of the time you need to forward all the ports in your selected range, try connecting directly to the internet if you can, if it doesn't speed up, the poddibility of a firewall blocking it is ruled out.

Hope ya get things sorted

Thanks once again, going to look into a few of the issues in a moment!

In the mean time though; glol at me.

Ran loads of free programs to try and recover these files without any luck, finally gave in and got R-Studio NTFS, started running it and I could see all of these files being created in the specified directory and I was rather excited to say the least!

When it finished I checked the directory, only to find it'd actually dragged all of my current files across, and not actually the new ones, d'oh!

Quick update fwiw:

The files I lost are now pretty much entirely gone, I tried recovering them but 95%+ of them are corrupt, but I'm not going to worry about that now, they're gone, there's nothing I can do about it so it's not really an issue I guess. I've just discovered the ethernet card problems I've been having are a common fault with the board, apparently the solution is to disable the Marvell driver and forget about it, so I guess the uTorrent problems are coincidental.

Finally, the front USB ports is something I'd really like to fix since I use them often. I've checked it's connected to the motherboard correctly, I've checked it's enabled in the BIOS (there's only one global setting in there which effects the rear ports too, those work fine) and I also tried removing some of the USB drivers in Windows with rather disastrous results; I seemed to overlook the fact that both my mouse and keyboard are USB powered, lol! Tried a PS2 mouse with no luck, but thankfully my old PS2 keyboard did, so I managed to re-install the drivers with that. But, anyways, sorry for my rant; if anyone can help get the front USB ports working that'd be great, thank you!