Curse

Elder III · Dec 10, 2009, 03:53 PM // 15:53

Here's the deal - I was running XP Home SP3 & Vista Home Premium 64bit in dual boot on my main PC for awhile. When my copy of Win7 arrived around 6 weeks ago I installed that and ran a Triple Boot setup. Anyway, after getting Win7 up and running for a day or two, I went back into XP to check on something and discovered that I did not have any Internet. For some reason the Ethernet Adapter was not being detected. I re-installed the drivers, both from my motherboard disc and from the internet, to no avail. I thought that perhaps the Win7 drivers had nullified the XP drivers, although whilst running XP and Vista I did not have a single problem with drivers "canceling" each other out. So, anyone have any ideas as to why installing Win7 would make Xp not recognize the network adapter anymore? For what it's worth my MOBO is an ASUS M47A8.

Now, I didn't have time to look into this for very long when it occurred since I was due to leave town for a week on the following day, and frankly I have liked Win7 so much that I forgot about it until now. I've decided to scrap both Vista and XP in favor of Win7 (still have them on other test computers for reference sake mostly) - so my only reason for asking about this now is for my own peace of mind, is there some simple and obvious solution to this problem (well no longer a problem lol) ???

nagisaki · Dec 10, 2009, 05:21 PM // 17:21

It's possible that the adapter somehow got disabled in device manager... Or perhaps... Oh who am I kidding, I haven't a clue without being able to run tests. I will give you a gold star on telling me one of the more interesting computer problems I've heard in a while, though.

Snograt · Dec 10, 2009, 05:59 PM // 17:59

That is odd, Elder. As you know, when you boot up an OS in a multi-boot system, all the other OSes are, to all intents and purposes, invisible to the current OS. They're just directories on other drives/partitions. In other words, the existence of other bootable OSes on your system should make no difference to the operation of anything with respect to any other OS.

tl;dr - I dunno

joshuarodger · Dec 10, 2009, 06:19 PM // 18:19

did you still have internet on Vista?

Elder III · Dec 10, 2009, 06:37 PM // 18:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by joshuarodger

did you still have internet on Vista?

yessireesir

I'm quite chuffed that I've managed to stump some of the brighter technical minds on this illustrious forum.

Bob Slydell · Dec 10, 2009, 07:21 PM // 19:21

I've had problems where a device appears physically dead but it just needs to be uninstalled/reinstalled in the device manager, than the drivers reapplied. I know you mentioned the thing about the drivers, but uninstalling the actual device and restarting to allow it to reappear (as a newly found device) solves some things. As Snograt said, it is virtually impossible for this to happen because of a dual boot setup or canceling the drivers out because only one OS is being utilized at a time, the other ones aren't.

I think it may have actually been a coincidence.

Elder III · Dec 10, 2009, 07:45 PM // 19:45

Aye, I did uninstall and re-install as well, when it didn't work after that I was about ready to panic and look for a new motherboard, but when I logged into Win7 it was working. I know that dual and tri boot setups shouldn't affect anything driver related... I think that you are right, it probably was/is a coincidence - but what caused it? (esp. since it worked with other OSs on the same Mobo).

Maybe I'll never know, hehe .... I'll be bugged to my grave now. :/

Bob Slydell · Dec 10, 2009, 07:55 PM // 19:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by Elder III

but what caused it? (esp. since it worked with other OSs on the same Mobo).

A very very corrupt system file in Windows XP. I dunno, lol. I've had things like GW just stop connecting to arenanet permanently and have to reinstall XP to fix it. And believe me I'd do anything to try and fix it. I had even went physically into the registry and deleted every string of "arenanet" and "guildwars" that I found and tried to "reinstall" GW, even though all it would do was reinstall it to the system but keep working from the .EXE and DAT that I keep copying over. Windows sucks sometimes.

KZaske · Dec 11, 2009, 12:10 AM // 00:10

I have had this happen to several test setups for Win 7 and XP. It does not effect Vista. In every case, Win7 was installed on the same physcial hard drive as XP but in different partitions. Which is why Microsoft advises testers (perhaps everyone) to install Windows 7 on a different physcial drive than the one used for XP. It's a known issue with Windows 7.

Elder III · Dec 11, 2009, 12:28 AM // 00:28

Win7, Vista, & XP were all on separate hard drives, with an OS partition on each hard drive. I did share documents, pics, music, etc... across the 3 OSs from the second partition on the XP hard drive though....