Device not working and cannot restore - damaged registry?

[Guest]

I am having a problem getting a USB device to work, and I cannot restore my
system to earlier checkpoints. This all started today when I plugged in a
USB flatbed scanner I haven't used for a few weeks. Windows reported an
error; when I checked Device Manager, it says:

Windows cannot start this hardware device because its configuration
information (in the registry) is incomplete or damaged. (Code 19).

I tried uninstalling, removing, and reloading the drivers, without success.
I called the manufacturer, and they said this means there is a virus in the
system. I have checked the system with my usual program (PC-cillin), plus the
Avira and Avast downloads - no viruses detected. So then I tried to restore
the system to earlier checkpoints, and system restore says it cannot restore
the system to any of my restore points. I tried creating a new checkpoint and
restoring to it, and that worked, but did not fix the problem.
I suspect there may be some damage to the registry. Is that what is
happening, or is it something else? What can I do about it, as I have this
sinking feeling the system may be ready to crash.
Thank You in advance for any help.

 

[Bert Kinney]

Hi Bruce,

Try running System Restore from Safe Mode.

Restart your computer, and then press F8 during the initial startup to start
your computer in Safe Mode.

Log on to an administrator account. In Safe Mode type or paste the following
command in the Start - Run box then press Enter.

%systemroot%\system32\restore\rstrui.exe

There are also other possibilities that can cause this to happen. The
following pages have some troubleshooting steps to take.

If System Restore will not function in Safe Mode, then there’s a good change
the failed restore is being caused by a corrupt restore point. Turning
System Restore off then on again will purges all existing restore points,
and creates one new one. There are other possible causes discussed in the
following troubleshooting steps that may preserve existing restore points.

Troubleshooting steps to take when System Restore fails to restore:
http://bertk.mvps.org/html/srfail.html

Regards,
Bert Kinney MS-MVP Shell/User
http://bertk.mvps.org
Member: http://dts-l.org

 

[Guest]

Hello,
Thank You for your suggestions.
I checked the page you suggested. The only listings in event viewer for
system restore (srservice) indicate several 111's, which are failure to
restore, and a 110, successful restore for the point I created today.
I let the system go into standby mode, and during the process, System
Restore erased all of my restore points, except for the one I created this
afternoon. So there is at this point nothing to check or repair.
I still cannot get the the scanner to work, with the message indicated in my
original post. And the computer is still going very slow - more than 5
minutes to boot, and it (a 2.4 ghz system) is at this point running slower
than my old 386.
All signs seem to point to malware, but none of the programs I have tried,
including Windows Defender and the ones mentioned in my original post, have
detected anything at all. If it's malware, its very clever malware.
I do defrag the disk every week, along with using disk cleanup; i have more
than 25% free space (more than 3 gb), 512 mb memory and a 768mb swap files,
all currrent patches and updates, and pretty much everything else suggested
by the other posts on this forum about slow computers. And I do not run
multiple applications at a time, other than the Trend Micro PC-cillin;
deactivating that does not speed things up, however.
I don't know whether all these problems are connected or not, but I imagine
that a malware program of some kind could be behind all of them.
Further suggestions welcome and appreciated.

 

[Bert Kinney]

A question about System Restore, how much disk space is it set to hold
restore points and is System Restore set to only monitor the partition
Windows is installed on?

Regards,
Bert Kinney MS-MVP Shell/User
http://bertk.mvps.org
Member: http://dts-l.org

 

[Guest]

System Restore is allowed 806 mb on Drice C:.
It is set only to monitor C:, which is the drive that holds Windows.