Hi all. Apologies in advance for such a long post...
I don't know if I just have a corrupt Windows (7 Ultimate) installation or what, but this all started three weeks ago or so, after installing new hardware (specifically: motherboard [Asus A58M-A], processor [AMD A10 6800K] and RAM [Kingston HyperX 8GB DDR3 1866]). Since I had the extra RAM slot, I also put in one of the Aeneon XTune 2GB DDR3 I have from before the upgrade. The sticker on it says it's 1866, but it shows up in BIOS/POST as 1333.
Since then, I've had the following problems:
Internet: Unable to establish any connection at all when using the ethernet cable plugged into my Cisco/Linksys EA2700 Router. I can connect wirelessly, but that connection is lousy and I'm not sure why, especially since the router is only about 20 feet from the computer. To be fair, the lousy wireless connection is something I was dealing with since before the hardware upgrade/Windows reinstall, which is why I finally gave up and bought a 50' ethernet cable (the computer used to be in a different room, though on the same floor of the house). The problem with being unable to get any type of connection when plugged in started after reinstalling Windows and then doing something like 180 updates and then moving the PC to the new spot. I made a point of moving the tower myself just so that I could be sure nothing happened to it, so I know there was no physical damage done because of dropping or otherwise banging it around at all.
I've checked the ethernet cable that runs from the modem to the router as well as the 50' one and neither of them appear to be damaged at all. I've also tried plugging the 50' one into all 4 of the ports on the back of the router, in the event that one of them just bit the dust somehow, but nothing changed.
Any thoughts on how I can either get my wired connection working again or what might be making the wireless connection so horrible? For clarification on "horrible", I'm not talking dial-up speeds, but some sites either load slowly or not at all (sites that load up just fine on every other device in the house - specifically 5 cell phones, and iPod, an Xbox 360, a Wii and a laptop). My connection to Battle.net for playing WoW/Starcraft II/Diablo III is also pretty lag-tastic. My NIC is an onboard Realtek 8111GR PCIe Gigabit LAN controller, according to the motherboard manual.
In terms of anything that may be interfering with the wireless signal, there's a metal support post and a metal I-beam a few feet from where the router currently sits (though it was previously 10 or so feet from both). Other than being in close proximity to those, the room is wide open. I was told that water can interfere with a wireless signal and we do have a lot of ground water under/around the house... can anyone verify whether ground water can degrade the signal so much over such a relatively small space?
Hard drive/partition issues: Until the upgrade, when the computer just wouldn't boot (presumably because Windows couldn't handle dealing with such big hardware changes all at once), I had Windows installed on a partition on a 3TB Western Digital drive. Since I had to reinstall anyway, I installed Windows to a partition on a smaller but faster (1TB Seagate) drive.
Up until this afternoon when I installed Seagate Discwizard, one of the partitions on the big drive was inaccessible, showing up in disk management and a couple of 3rd-party hard drive utility/partitioning programs as simply "unallocated space". Since this afternoon, though, that partition is now showing up as a completely separate hard drive in disk management AND as "unallocated space" on the drive it's actually a part of. I'm a little leery of just leaving things as they are and using that partition since it's showing up 2 different ways. Discwizard only shows that partition as a separate drive; there is no "unallocated space" showing on the 3TB drive. Is this something I should worry about somehow fixing? If so, do you have any recommendations on how to do it?
I was reluctant to do anything that would have resulted in losing any data on that large drive as a whole or on that partition in particular, but since finally gaining access to it and copying everything onto an external drive, I can format the drive if necessary, although another problem with partitions is with the first partition on that same big drive. That partition is the one that I used to have Windows installed on. The OS still sees it as a "System, Active, Primary Partition" in disk management and won't allow me to format it.
At this point, I've got enough storage that I'm not terribly concerned about being unable to format the old Windows partition, but it still bothers me to have that space being used by files/programs that are no longer actually being used. I do have games/programs/misc. files on other partitions on that same drive, so I'd like to avoid having to do anything that would mean losing that data or having to shuffle it around to the smaller internal drive or the even smaller (500GB) external one.
Any ideas on how to fix these issues would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
I don't know if I just have a corrupt Windows (7 Ultimate) installation or what, but this all started three weeks ago or so, after installing new hardware (specifically: motherboard [Asus A58M-A], processor [AMD A10 6800K] and RAM [Kingston HyperX 8GB DDR3 1866]). Since I had the extra RAM slot, I also put in one of the Aeneon XTune 2GB DDR3 I have from before the upgrade. The sticker on it says it's 1866, but it shows up in BIOS/POST as 1333.
Since then, I've had the following problems:
Internet: Unable to establish any connection at all when using the ethernet cable plugged into my Cisco/Linksys EA2700 Router. I can connect wirelessly, but that connection is lousy and I'm not sure why, especially since the router is only about 20 feet from the computer. To be fair, the lousy wireless connection is something I was dealing with since before the hardware upgrade/Windows reinstall, which is why I finally gave up and bought a 50' ethernet cable (the computer used to be in a different room, though on the same floor of the house). The problem with being unable to get any type of connection when plugged in started after reinstalling Windows and then doing something like 180 updates and then moving the PC to the new spot. I made a point of moving the tower myself just so that I could be sure nothing happened to it, so I know there was no physical damage done because of dropping or otherwise banging it around at all.
I've checked the ethernet cable that runs from the modem to the router as well as the 50' one and neither of them appear to be damaged at all. I've also tried plugging the 50' one into all 4 of the ports on the back of the router, in the event that one of them just bit the dust somehow, but nothing changed.
Any thoughts on how I can either get my wired connection working again or what might be making the wireless connection so horrible? For clarification on "horrible", I'm not talking dial-up speeds, but some sites either load slowly or not at all (sites that load up just fine on every other device in the house - specifically 5 cell phones, and iPod, an Xbox 360, a Wii and a laptop). My connection to Battle.net for playing WoW/Starcraft II/Diablo III is also pretty lag-tastic. My NIC is an onboard Realtek 8111GR PCIe Gigabit LAN controller, according to the motherboard manual.
In terms of anything that may be interfering with the wireless signal, there's a metal support post and a metal I-beam a few feet from where the router currently sits (though it was previously 10 or so feet from both). Other than being in close proximity to those, the room is wide open. I was told that water can interfere with a wireless signal and we do have a lot of ground water under/around the house... can anyone verify whether ground water can degrade the signal so much over such a relatively small space?
Hard drive/partition issues: Until the upgrade, when the computer just wouldn't boot (presumably because Windows couldn't handle dealing with such big hardware changes all at once), I had Windows installed on a partition on a 3TB Western Digital drive. Since I had to reinstall anyway, I installed Windows to a partition on a smaller but faster (1TB Seagate) drive.
Up until this afternoon when I installed Seagate Discwizard, one of the partitions on the big drive was inaccessible, showing up in disk management and a couple of 3rd-party hard drive utility/partitioning programs as simply "unallocated space". Since this afternoon, though, that partition is now showing up as a completely separate hard drive in disk management AND as "unallocated space" on the drive it's actually a part of. I'm a little leery of just leaving things as they are and using that partition since it's showing up 2 different ways. Discwizard only shows that partition as a separate drive; there is no "unallocated space" showing on the 3TB drive. Is this something I should worry about somehow fixing? If so, do you have any recommendations on how to do it?
I was reluctant to do anything that would have resulted in losing any data on that large drive as a whole or on that partition in particular, but since finally gaining access to it and copying everything onto an external drive, I can format the drive if necessary, although another problem with partitions is with the first partition on that same big drive. That partition is the one that I used to have Windows installed on. The OS still sees it as a "System, Active, Primary Partition" in disk management and won't allow me to format it.
At this point, I've got enough storage that I'm not terribly concerned about being unable to format the old Windows partition, but it still bothers me to have that space being used by files/programs that are no longer actually being used. I do have games/programs/misc. files on other partitions on that same drive, so I'd like to avoid having to do anything that would mean losing that data or having to shuffle it around to the smaller internal drive or the even smaller (500GB) external one.
Any ideas on how to fix these issues would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
