New
#11
Dénouement
Apologies for hijacking this thread.
(Correction, the USB dongle referred to above was not made by Trendnet, rather was an Encore Wireless-N USB adapter.)
I ordered a Rosewill PCI wireless adapter and installed it into this Gigabyte MB based computer. That solved the mass storage issue, BUT, the Rosewill PCI device didn't work properly. It connected to the wireless access point with a good signal, but the throughput to the computer was awful. When I tested at www.speedtest.net it was worse than dialup.
So, the common denominator seemed to be the motherboard. The Gigabyte board went back to Newegg and I purchased an Intel DG41RQ MB and installed it last night with Windows 7 64-bit. The Rosewell internal card reader was recognized automatically and worked properly. At separate times, I tried both the Rosewill PCI wireless card and the Encore USB adapter, and they both worked.
All is good.
But, who would have known? Very frustrating. I'm thinking...during the installation with the Gigabyte board.....Wrong drivers? Incompatible OS? WHAT AM I DOING WRONG? All the error messages that aren't really telling me anything useful! No indications at all that it was the motherboard.
Exactly what was wrong with the Gigabyte board? Don't know, but there was *something.*
Computers aren't easy.