I'm not familiar with your SoundBlaster Card. Does it provide an
IDE port (unused), and is it turned off with jumpers or in it's own
configuration software? That might be the start of your problems...
If you find that port on, it might have cause a "flag" to be set in the
registry to cause the rest of your problems...  If not, read on...

From similar things I have seen, it seems your Busmaster drivers
for the hard drive controller may have become disabled, corrupted,
or turned off...  OR?, You have a hardware problem...
If it is software:  I have fixed this sort of problem with a restore of a
recent back-up ("known working") of the registry.
You still need to "look for" the cause... (Unless it was a power spike...)
Since you change your system little, this could be a much older
back-up... You will loose any "system" changes made after the back-up,
but this works well, and is easier to "fix-up" when you are done...

If it is, (or was caused by), hardware...  Anything "loose" might have
caused this. Hard drive data or power cables, RAM not seated
"just right", something getting bumped, thermally induced changes in
sockets (creeping) and minor corrosion problems, etc...
I always "backup the data" and go in search of the small problems
before I freak-out with the big stuff...
Slightly over a year is an "odd" time for a MB to fail "statistically"
but you always have that chance...
When you said "re-installed"  Windows, did you format and do a
clean install, or just "go over" what was there...
If you did it the "easy way", you probably have enumeration
problems in your registry...
If you formatted, that would point more towards a hardware problem.
If you have access to a spare hard drive, (as small as 120m should
be fine for this), do a clean install and check out your hardware first that way...
FOR SAFETY, get your old hard drive(s) _out_of_the_system_ (or
disconnected) when fooling around...

One last though... When you said you deleted your devices...
Did you delete them in SAFE MODE?  You will generally find
MANY more "junk devices" in there, especially when you are having
problems.
If you write back to the list, try to let us know what type (VIA, INTEL, ?)
PCI controller chip your motherboard has. (I am only familiar with VIA).
Please keep all replies on the list, as I would like to learn an "easy"
way to correct this type of problem also...
Note: Sometimes it is only possible to remove an enumeration problem
like this, (if that is what it is), with a clean install of the OS...
Sometimes, a clean install is the quickest, easiest way to fix _various_
"software" problems...
I'm getting ready to "bite that bullet" for other problems...
My system -- Four years, and "_forced_" to keep running... 3.1/95a/95b
          Hope this helps,   Rick Glazier

----- Original Message -----
From: "Francisco Novo" <[log in to unmask]>
>
> My story:
>
> Once upon a time, there was a nice computer which
> worked flawlessly since the day of its birth, more than
> a year ago.  It's an AcerOpen AX6LC MoBo, PII/333 MHz,
> 64 MBytes DRAMM, 6.4 GByte Maxtor HDD (Primary Master),
> an old but very reliable Creative 6X CD-ROM Drive as
> Primary Slave, Sound Blaster 32 sound card, ATIExpert
> AGP 8MB Video card and Win95 (OSR2) as the OS.
>
> Two weeks ago, one Monday morning during boot up, an awful
> blue screen came up with a message reading more or less:
> "Windows has detected a child device not supported in this
> configuration..." and some other details I must confess not
> to remember.  Windows then entered in Safe Mode and after
> re-configuring the video settings everything appeared to be
> running fine... at that time.
>
> Some days after I tried to run a CD-ROM in my drive and found
> that it was no longer recognized.  I then found that exploring
> "My Computer" showed no trace of the once existing drive, so I
> went to the Device Manager and found three brand new yellow
> "!" under Hard Disk Controllers:
>
> ! Creative Labs IDE Controller
> ! Primary IDE Controller (Single FIFO).......Using IRQ 14)
> ! Secondary IDE Controller (Single FIFO).....(Using IRQ 15)
> and a Standard Dual PCI IDE Controller with no "!" on it...(Using IRQ 14
> and 15 )
>
> None of the above devices shows any conflict listed in the
> "Resource" Tab, but Performance reports that "Drive C is running
> in MS-DOS compatibility mode file system"
>
> I've tried deleting every conflicting device, but Windows brings
> them up again during boot up, I tested the CD-ROM drive in another
> computer and it works fine, I even reinstalled Windows ending
> exactly in the same situation.
>
> Double clicking the Creative IDE Controller\General shows a message
> saying that the "Device is causing a resource conflict," but I can't
> find the cause of such a sudden conflict and this thing is driving
> me crazy.  I'm trying not to reach the "dramatic" decision of
> reformating the HDD to start from the very beginning because
> my computer has never "seen" its CD drive again.

> NO HARDWARE changes has been made since it was built up, nor
> any SOFTWARE or Software drivers were changed in the past few
> month.

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