Missing cds and NIC. Should I repair, reinstall, or other approac

[Guest]

I have a PC running XP Pro w/ SP2 and all current fixes with the following
problem...

Missing NIC (PCI)
Missing CD (IDE)
Missing CD (SCSI)

I checked device manager and found message for the cd stating "the driver
was successfully loaded but the hardware could not be found".

I attempted to uninstall one cd and reboot to see if the new device whould
be found. The problem changed to "the hardware could not be started because
the configuration information in the registry was corrupted".

The NIC was missing altogether. After some device manager menu surfing, I
found an option for show hidden devices. I checked it and I found the NIC.
However I am still unable to establish a network connection using the hidden
device.

I rulled out a hardware problem because I have other PCI cards and IDE
drives which work fine. I've tried to restore back to all available
checkpoints without success. The restore fails.

Is there a way to correct this problem without performing a repair, or
reinstall? I've build a slipstream cd with SP2 and thought I would ask
before proceeding. I hope I do not have to reinstall.

BTW, how does a device become hidden?

 

[Jerry]

A device becomes hidden when it had been detected once but now it cannot be
found. Example, your printer is on and shows in device manager, you turn the
power off and it becomes hidden till powered up again.

Does the BIOS correctly identify the IDE devices?

I would open device manager and delete/remove ALL problem devices, reboot,
and let Windows redetect.

 

[Guest]

The BIOS does indeed detect all the devices. I'm able to boot from the cd
drive in question.

I also tried the remove and see if windows would redetect the cd (IDE)
drive. That is when the device manager, device status message changed from
finding the driver and not the device, to corrupted registry entry.

Do you still think removal and reboot will solve the problem if I remove all
devices?

 

[Jerry]

Yes.

The BIOS does indeed detect all the devices. I'm able to boot from the cd
drive in question.

I also tried the remove and see if windows would redetect the cd (IDE)
drive. That is when the device manager, device status message changed
from
finding the driver and not the device, to corrupted registry entry.

Do you still think removal and reboot will solve the problem if I remove
all
devices?

 

[Guest]

Well. I tried removing the devices and rebooting with no impact. The IDE CD
and SCSI cd both show the same errors. The NIC is still missing and not
working. Soooooo I tried the repair. Ready for this one.

I performed an XP pro repair per

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

as follows...

I booted from the cd IDE, when the install reboots to finish the install,
the IDE cd comes up missing and I have to move the cd from the IDE to SCSI
cd. It happens when looking for E:/i386/ASMS.

Any ideas?