Hmm -- well it's good to know that at least some things have changed. Sorry to go through such a long process to figure out what's wrong -- I know how frustrating it is to try things only to have to restart the computer after they don't work.

I've gone through that uninstall-drivers-reinstall-for-DMA thing before, and it was no fun at all. For some reason, things went crazy (most notably, my SoundBlaster card, which forever skipped).

What was the reason you wanted the controllers to be set up for DMA?

As far as Java goes -- there should be a button on www.java.com that says, "Get It Now". You might want to try uninstalling Java (from Control Panel -> Add/Remove Programs) prior to going there also, just to make sure it gives you the most recent version.