G
Guest
Win XP Pro SP2 including most recent security updates.
I was unable to connect to the Internet and found that Device Manager showed
a problem with my NIC: Windows is unable to load drivers. The first thing
to do is to uninstall and let Windows find the hardware and reinstall, right?
When I try to uninstall, I get "Failed to uninstall, this device may be
necessary to boot up" or something like that. I do not boot from a network,
just from the hard drive, in the usual manner.
I get this behavior in Safe Mode as well (although in Safe Mode, Device
Manager shows no problem with the NIC, probably because Windows didn't try to
load the networking drivers).
Something else clearly is going on because all of my System Restore Points
are "unavailale" although the System Volume Information directory is not
empty.
I' ve run Ad-Aware in Safe Mode, which didn't find anything. I'm about to
run Spybot S&D also. I've done a CHKDSK /R which didn't find any errors.
Any suggestions before I either open the case and physically remove the NIC
or restore from my last Ghost image (which I'd rather not do because it was a
week or so ago and I'll have to take steps to prevent losing a bunch of data
that has been modified in the interim)?
I was unable to connect to the Internet and found that Device Manager showed
a problem with my NIC: Windows is unable to load drivers. The first thing
to do is to uninstall and let Windows find the hardware and reinstall, right?
When I try to uninstall, I get "Failed to uninstall, this device may be
necessary to boot up" or something like that. I do not boot from a network,
just from the hard drive, in the usual manner.
I get this behavior in Safe Mode as well (although in Safe Mode, Device
Manager shows no problem with the NIC, probably because Windows didn't try to
load the networking drivers).
Something else clearly is going on because all of my System Restore Points
are "unavailale" although the System Volume Information directory is not
empty.
I' ve run Ad-Aware in Safe Mode, which didn't find anything. I'm about to
run Spybot S&D also. I've done a CHKDSK /R which didn't find any errors.
Any suggestions before I either open the case and physically remove the NIC
or restore from my last Ghost image (which I'd rather not do because it was a
week or so ago and I'll have to take steps to prevent losing a bunch of data
that has been modified in the interim)?