Yellow ? in Device Manager

[A-non-i-moose]

Long story, I'll keep it short. Virus got into the hard drive, crashed
system, could not recover, tried and tried, nothing worked. Had a new,
never been used HD on the shelf; pulled out the infected drive, installed
the new one; loaded XP and all my apps from original CD's; loaded all my
docs, Excel spreadsheets, and other personal files from the external HD that
I use for backups.

Funny thing -- the computer recognizes the new HD as drive I: but it seems
to be living with that -- I've used the computer for a few days now and it's
working fine.

WinXP SP2.

HOWEVER -- when I first booted it up after installing the new HD and
installing XP, I got several notices -- something like "Found new hardware
but can't find the driver." I ran the "install new hardware, find the
driver" wizard several times, each time wizard reported nothing found.

When I did Start > Control Panel > System > Device Manager, I found the
following:

Big Yellow ? PCI Devices
Under that heading were three subheadings each with a yellow ? and the
identification "PCI device."

This computer has four PCI slots -- one had a modem installed, one had a
wireless card, and two were empty. I don't use either card so I pulled them
out and booted -- no error messages, no wizard searching for drivers.

HOWEVER AGAIN -- Now, when I check my device manager I still have a big
yellow ? in front of PCI Devices and there is one device under that heading,
it too has a yellow ?

But -- nothing is plugged into the PCI slots and I have no clue as to what
the yellow ? refers to.

Apparently it's not a problem with the computer -- all peripherals work
fine -- monitor, printer, photo printer, scanner, external HD, monitor.

So -- how do I determine the reason for the yellow ?, or, should I just pour
a couple of fingers of Wild Turkey and forget about it??

Thanks.

 

[DL]

Thats because you failed to install the mobo & other drivers from either
your PC maker, if a large OEM, or Laptop, eg Dell/HP or from hardware
manufacturers sites
Do NOT use MS Update for drivers.

The likely reason for the boot drive been shown as I is because readers or
multiple drives were connected when you installed win
You cannot rectify this without clean installing Win (with these other
devices disconnectd)

 

[Patrick Keenan]

Long story, I'll keep it short. Virus got into the hard drive, crashed
system, could not recover, tried and tried, nothing worked. Had a new,
never been used HD on the shelf; pulled out the infected drive, installed
the new one; loaded XP and all my apps from original CD's; loaded all my
docs, Excel spreadsheets, and other personal files from the external HD
that I use for backups.

Funny thing -- the computer recognizes the new HD as drive I: but it seems
to be living with that -- I've used the computer for a few days now and
it's working fine.

WinXP SP2.

HOWEVER -- when I first booted it up after installing the new HD and
installing XP, I got several notices -- something like "Found new hardware
but can't find the driver." I ran the "install new hardware, find the
driver" wizard several times, each time wizard reported nothing found.

When I did Start > Control Panel > System > Device Manager, I found the
following:

Big Yellow ? PCI Devices
Under that heading were three subheadings each with a yellow ? and the
identification "PCI device."

This computer has four PCI slots -- one had a modem installed, one had a
wireless card, and two were empty. I don't use either card so I pulled
them out and booted -- no error messages, no wizard searching for drivers.

HOWEVER AGAIN -- Now, when I check my device manager I still have a big
yellow ? in front of PCI Devices and there is one device under that
heading, it too has a yellow ?

But -- nothing is plugged into the PCI slots and I have no clue as to what
the yellow ? refers to.

Apparently it's not a problem with the computer -- all peripherals work
fine -- monitor, printer, photo printer, scanner, external HD, monitor.

So -- how do I determine the reason for the yellow ?, or, should I just
pour a couple of fingers of Wild Turkey and forget about it??

Thanks.

The answer is simple. You forgot a key step in the reinstall, which is
installing the motherboard drivers. These are usually provided on a disk
from the motherboard manufacturer, or you may need to determine the
motherboard type (which is even silkscreened onto the board itself) and get
the drivers from their website. Don't get them elsewhere.

HTH
-pk