Ok, so after a batch of overclocking runs (seeking limit of my quad) i finally hit 'bsod on when trying to boot windows' territory and backed my oc down.....
However, after returning to stable settings and booting into windows I was greated with no network connection logo in the corner of the screen.....quick browse to the 'network connections' menu shows zero network adapters found....thats both lan ports and firewire missing. Erm, ok - load firefox and whats this? my internet works perfectly......so does connecting to other pc's across my home network, so my lan ports do actually work/are installed.

So I jump into device manager to check things out........ erm, device manager is BLANK - ie a big grey box - nothing in it at all, no 'computer' tag with drop down hardware sub divisions with all attached hardware, literally nothing. Same goes for the logical disk manager - no harddrives detected. Hmmmm, a quick browse to 'my computer' reveals thats all my hard drives and dvd drives still show up. And can be accessed fine. Yet, right clicking on them and going to the hardware tab gives me another empty space where there should be device info.....
If i plug in a usb thumb drive, i get no 'safely remove hardware' icon in the taskbar, and no little windows noise to signify its detection, BUT, lo and behold, it appears in My Computer and can be accessed as normal

Its the same in safemode, and its the same when logged in as the administrator - no hardware detected.

I cant install any new drivers, for eg nvidia drivers, as it says no compatible hardware found.....however the old drivers still installed are fine....apparently so long as i dont take them off.....as i wont be able to put them back.



Ok, so its NOT a spyware/virus problem - spybot s&d and Nod32 both come up clean. I have 21 running processes at XP startup, and I know what they all are, so nothing untoward running behind the scenes - plus its knackered in safemode too.
Iv google searched - its not the common spyware cause, nor is it case of incorrect registry permissions - iv doubled checked all the relevant registry keys and permissions - all are perfect.
The plug and play service IS running, so thats not an issue either.

Iv no idea whats doing it.....maybe a bios setting? Iv changed nothing whilst OC'ing except voltages and fsb.......pc worked fine before, my RAID0 array is 100% healthy, so in theory nothings changed.....except windows being nerfed :/


So any help or ideas?