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Amilo M3438G problems with external storage Topic is solved

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Amilo M3438G problems with external storage  Topic is solved

Postby Wagner669 » Sat Aug 04, 2007 1:16 am

Greetings to everyone.
After searching for few hours this forum I couldn't find a possible solution for few of my problems.
My system is an Amilo M 3438G runing Windows XP Home SP2 - Greek version
After making some driver updates, I came across some problems.

-On board card reader is not working.
It is recognised by windows device manager as "Generic Card Reader" and it runs on Microsoft drivers... But is not shown as a drive in My Computer.
Disk manager also can recognise the SD-card inserted, but even after manually adding a drive letter, explorer doesn't show the Card driver
edit: ANY REMOVABLE USB STORAGE DEVICE WON'T WORK
-HD/CD drives problem
After every restart the CD drive gets the (D:) and my second HDD -over USB- gets the (E:) letter....
I keep My Documents folder on the second HDD so it's kinda nerv busting having to change the letters every time.

-Bios update
After flashing my BIOS with the software from FSC site, I gained the ability to boot from removable media. USB stics and USB HDDs...
But I can not set the BIOS to boot from my SATA drive.
Windows are installed to my SATA drive

-Second HDD insatallation
I know that Amilo M 3438G has a space for a second IDE HDD....
I know where is the SATA HDD... I upgraded my RAM to 2GB and found it.
So...can anyone tell me where is the second HDD supposed to be plugged????
I assume it's under the keyboard.... So, how do I remove my keyboard??

Thanx.
Alex

edit:
After spending more time reading forums regarding FSC Amilo M x438G Notebooks.... I think I wasted my money... :S
Last edited by Wagner669 on Mon Aug 06, 2007 12:59 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Amilo M3438G problems

Postby aspettl » Sat Aug 04, 2007 4:15 pm

Wagner669 wrote:-On board card reader is not working.

Wagner669 wrote:-HD/CD drives problem

Maybe these two are correlated. Both times problems with drive letters... possible that here's something broken in your Windows installation.
(Doesn't look like a hardware problem.)

Wagner669 wrote:-Bios update

You internal SATA harddisk is connected via the VIA RAID controller. The internal Intel-SATA-Controller is not used.
(I can't tell you the explicit options, I don't have this laptop.)

Wagner669 wrote:-Second HDD insatallation

The second drive is also SATA.
Photo: topic,31,-Mx438-2nd-sATA-HDD-part-list.html

Regards
Aaron
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Postby Wagner669 » Sat Aug 04, 2007 5:03 pm

Thanx a lot!
I'm updating the drivers ov VIA chipset and will inform you :)

Edit:

I can not update the drivers of VIA chipset....
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Postby aspettl » Sat Aug 04, 2007 9:32 pm

Hmm, why VIA driver? The BIOS doesn't need any drivers.

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Aaron
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Postby Wagner669 » Sun Aug 05, 2007 2:05 pm

aspettl wrote:Hmm, why VIA driver? The BIOS doesn't need any drivers.

Regards
Aaron


Why bios
I updated bios and the card reader worked.
The card reader is sonnected to a USB port.
Should I update USB drivers???

Check the screen shots


Image

This is what I see when I click the "My Comp" icon.
C: D: and E: drives are available.....


Image

Here you can see that the device is connected

Image

And here you can see that I gave a drive letter -F: - to my card reader ....
WTF????
Why it's not shown in my computer???
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Postby aspettl » Sun Aug 05, 2007 2:36 pm

Ok, thought you were working on point 3 from your first posting.
This, as I said, is probably a Windows problem. A driver won't solve this, especially the VIA driver has nothing to do with it.

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Postby Wagner669 » Sun Aug 05, 2007 3:18 pm

aspettl wrote:Ok, thought you were working on point 3 from your first posting.
This, as I said, is probably a Windows problem. A driver won't solve this, especially the VIA driver has nothing to do with it.

Regards
Aaron


No, point three is not such annoying.
And the possibility to boot from a removable device, gives me few ideas.
I can have a second OS on a USB Stick ;)
USB2.0 is faster than SATA HDD....
So... A faster system....
And you can back it up easier

Any way.
I had a funny idea....
I saw that the internal card reader is connected on the same USB hub with mouse/tv tuner/external HDD....
What if I connect another Card reader to the same hub???
I removed the TV tuner and connected a cheap USB2 card reader I had for few years and that on other computers still works:)

....Same story....
Detected by device manager
Manually given drive letter...
Explorer doesn't show it....

Then I conected an old USB stick...
Detected by device manager
Manually given drive letter...
And it won't appear....

Then I conected U3 -micro cruser 4GB- USB stick...
Detected by device manager
The U3 drive gets an drive letter and appears in Explorer...
The Device after beeing given manually a drive letter won't appear....

Then I connected a Transcend USB HDD....
Detected by device manager
Manually given drive letter...
And it won't appear....


I think it has something to do with the Logical Drive Managment Service of XP....

Any ideas???????

Another strange thing.....
After few restarts, I forgot to swich off my external HDD...and the system booted to windows....
Though it had few problems :S
Last edited by Wagner669 on Mon Aug 06, 2007 1:08 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Postby Wagner669 » Sun Aug 05, 2007 5:04 pm

Next steps.
-Intel chipset drivers installation from the FSC CD
-SP2 installation


I will proceed tomorrow with those steps.
If they don't work....
a - Format
b - Purchase of a new Hope and Pray Laptop....Sorry ....Hewlette Packard Laptop....
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Postby Wagner669 » Fri Aug 17, 2007 9:58 pm

Fixed.....

The Computer was formated and windows were re-installed.

Please tell me how to map the PowerDVD prog to it's shortcut button??
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