How do you get system restore working?

[Licensed to Quill]

I found over 16,000 references by googling system restore but none told me
what to do when it reports numerous restore points available but none
actually complete the restore.

I had a very slightly annoying error message after installation of SP2
"DRI_KBFiltr : The system cannot find the file specified"

I was told to delete some keys from the registry and when I did, the whole
keyboard stopped working. It seems to be internal to the Satellite computer
and the generic PS2 drivers wont work on it. TOshiba doesnt seem to provide
technical support for this.

I am NOT running out of space on the drive at all. Is there a way of
identifying an earlier-dated restry and restoring it if System Restore
doesnt complete? Microsoft were baffled and apparently havent come across
this problem with SP2.

 

[Shenan Stanley]

I found over 16,000 references by googling system restore but none
told me what to do when it reports numerous restore points available
but none actually complete the restore.

I had a very slightly annoying error message after installation of SP2
"DRI_KBFiltr : The system cannot find the file specified"

I was told to delete some keys from the registry and when I did, the
whole keyboard stopped working. It seems to be internal to the
Satellite computer and the generic PS2 drivers wont work on it.
TOshiba doesnt seem to provide technical support for this.

I am NOT running out of space on the drive at all. Is there a way of
identifying an earlier-dated restry and restoring it if System Restore
doesnt complete? Microsoft were baffled and apparently havent come
across this problem with SP2.

It's actually quite common for Restore Points to go "bad".. (Corruption.)
As far as I have seen there is NO correction for this. You have to lose the
restore points and start anew.

(This, of course, will erase any previous restore point you have.)

Turn off System Restore.
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=310405

Reboot.

Turn on System Restore.
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=310405

Make a Manual Restoration Point.
http://snipurl.com/68nx

Also, you should look into backing up your valuable files and folders.
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=308422

If anyone knows different - I'll be glad to add it to my arsenal.

 

[Licensed to Quill]

It IS curious isnt it that everyone thinks that all previous registries have
suddenly become corrupt in some way?? I agree no one has found a method of
manually restoring prior registries but there must be some way of doing it:
It is probably just the system restore program wihch is corrupted as opposed
to every single one of the registry files themselves?

(All I actually need is the Toshiba Statellite keyboard driver for Windows
XP Pro)

 

[JAX]

"(All I actually need is the Toshiba Statellite keyboard driver for Windows
XP Pro)"

In that case, download it from Toshiba!

JAX

 

[Licensed to Quill]

DUHHHHHH

"(All I actually need is the Toshiba Statellite keyboard driver for Windows
XP Pro)"

In that case, download it from Toshiba!

JAX

 

[Vanguard]

DUHHHHHH

Since it sounds like you still have the mouse to use, why not
right-click on My Computer and select Manage (or start the Device
Manager in Control Panel), delete the keyboard device, and reboot? The
keyboard should be detected and reinstalled through hardware detection
during Windows startup. If that doesn't work, delete the keyboard
device and pick a generic one to see if the keyboard starts working
again. Once you get the keyboard working with a standard driver, then
go to Toshiba's web site to download their latest driver for it, if they
provide one. Maybe they just rely on the standard keyboard driver
embedded in Windows.

When you say, "DUHHHH", that implies you looked but there was no
keyboard driver for your model of their product. Is that actually true,
have you yet bothered to even look? It would take us as long as it
would take you to go look on their web site for a driver. Actually it
would take us longer because we would have to make many guesses at which
model you have within the Satellite family and look at many tech
articles to get a consensus of what Toshiba does for drivers. You never
told us the model you have. You should know what Satellite model you
have and so you can do the search yourself (start at
http://snipurl.com/agnz).

"I was told to delete some keys from the registry ...". Who told you
this? Did they not mention to first export the keys so you could
restore them in case their deletion caused problems? Maybe that person
assumed you knew how to use the registry editor and would backup what
you were going to delete.

"Toshiba doesn't seem to provide technical support for this." So what
did they say when you called them?

DRI_KBFiltr. That doesn't look like a keyboard driver file to me,
especially with the "filter" string in its name. It looks more like
some additional utility that probably chained itself into the keyboard
driver. I also have Windows XP Service Pack 2 installed. My keyboard
driver is the generic "Easy Internet Keyboard" (probably because Windows
detected volume, mute, and home page keys). My keyboard is connected to
the PS/2 keyboard connector on the backpanel. A search on my computer
does not turn up this filename. What happens when you run msconfig.exe
to disable all startup programs and reboot? What happens if you reboot
into Safe mode?

If you cannot get the system working again as is, then you might end up
have to perform an in-place upgrade that steps atop your current install
(and then reapply SP-2); see http://support.microsoft.com/?id=315341,
method 2, Repair.

A Google search on "DRI_KBFiltr" turned up 94 matches, and the first one
that was shown in the match list might help you
(http://www.jsiinc.com/SUBM/tip6200/rh6277.htm). A Google Groups search
on "DRV_Filtr" (quoted to ensure the underscore got included) turned up
391 matches. I have no idea on what you searched when using Google or
Google Groups. You said you got 16,000 matches. That's 33 times the
total matches that I got in Google and Google Groups. By the
description in the JSIINC article, it sure looks like I was on the money
that you have something MORE installed to provide additional features
for your keyboard than just the standard keyboard driver. It seems
weird that Toshiba would be using a 3rd party keyboard utility to get
full support for their embedded keyboard - unless, of course, it was
something you installed yourself.

 

[Licensed to Quill]

Sorry for the DUHHHHH but that was blindingly obvious, hence the troll
alert, - I didn't mean to be gratuituously insulting!

Yes, I had tried the obvious things like deleting from device manager and
reinstalling and the whole reason I had posted was because it did
successfully re-install the standard PS2 keyboard and the internal keyboard
still doesn't work AND there is no keyboard driver at the Toshiba web site.
I posted because I wondered if anyone else had had this problem and knew the
cure (as opposed to because I needed anyone telling me to try asking Toshiba
how to cure a Toshiba computer) As far as TS is concerned, they just assume
that if you buy a TOshiba computer you have an IT department so they dont
need to provide technical support any more: To prove this, typically all
they ever say is "put the restore disc in and reboot your computer" (meaning
THAT should get you out of our hair for at least a month or so while you
discover that you have deleted all your software, all your data and all your
configurations because of the joke which we played on you)

So I wondered if anyone had ever come across a keyboard driver OF ANY TYPE
on the TOshiba site.

Since it sounds like you still have the mouse to use, why not
right-click on My Computer and select Manage (or start the Device
Manager in Control Panel), delete the keyboard device, and reboot? The
keyboard should be detected and reinstalled through hardware detection
during Windows startup. If that doesn't work, delete the keyboard
device and pick a generic one to see if the keyboard starts working
again. Once you get the keyboard working with a standard driver, then
go to Toshiba's web site to download their latest driver for it, if they
provide one. Maybe they just rely on the standard keyboard driver
embedded in Windows.

When you say, "DUHHHH", that implies you looked but there was no
keyboard driver for your model of their product. Is that actually true,
have you yet bothered to even look? It would take us as long as it
would take you to go look on their web site for a driver. Actually it
would take us longer because we would have to make many guesses at which
model you have within the Satellite family and look at many tech
articles to get a consensus of what Toshiba does for drivers. You never
told us the model you have. You should know what Satellite model you
have and so you can do the search yourself (start at
http://snipurl.com/agnz).

"I was told to delete some keys from the registry ...". Who told you
this? Did they not mention to first export the keys so you could
restore them in case their deletion caused problems? Maybe that person
assumed you knew how to use the registry editor and would backup what
you were going to delete.

"Toshiba doesn't seem to provide technical support for this." So what
did they say when you called them?

DRI_KBFiltr. That doesn't look like a keyboard driver file to me,
especially with the "filter" string in its name. It looks more like
some additional utility that probably chained itself into the keyboard
driver. I also have Windows XP Service Pack 2 installed. My keyboard
driver is the generic "Easy Internet Keyboard" (probably because Windows
detected volume, mute, and home page keys). My keyboard is connected to
the PS/2 keyboard connector on the backpanel. A search on my computer
does not turn up this filename. What happens when you run msconfig.exe
to disable all startup programs and reboot? What happens if you reboot
into Safe mode?

Doesn't assist (Microsoft told me it wouldn't)

If you cannot get the system working again as is, then you might end up
have to perform an in-place upgrade that steps atop your current install
(and then reapply SP-2); see http://support.microsoft.com/?id=315341,
method 2, Repair.

I did think of backing out of SP2 and reinstalling to see if it would
restore the keyboard drivers and then upgrade the proper ones to SP2 on
re-re-installation but wondered if there was an easier way like trying some
Toshiba keyboard driver or if anyone knew how to reinstall "a program called
Easy Button" ( SP2 had to be installed three or four times before it took
and then only with Microsoft's assistance during the course of a two hour
call)

A Google search on "DRI_KBFiltr" turned up 94 matches, and the first one
that was shown in the match list might help you
(http://www.jsiinc.com/SUBM/tip6200/rh6277.htm).

That sort of message made me think that even if there isnt a keyboard driver
for the special toshiba keyboard for my computer wihch admitttedly DOES have
some special keys, there might be one for SOME toshiba keyboards which might
get my computer working again? The trouble is (and this is another reason
for that DUHHHHHH) that having dicontinued TS, their search engine is so
useless that searching the Toshiba web site for a keyboard driver reveals
nothing (I suspect there may well be one somewhere which is, again, why I
posted here). The advice I was given to get rid of the (harmless) error
message was to delete something called EZKEYBOARD from add/remove programs
as well as some keys in the registry. I didnt back up because I thought I
could rely on the SYstem Restore to get back to the day before's registry:
(SYstem restore now doesnt work as I mentioned)

A Google Groups search

on "DRV_Filtr" (quoted to ensure the underscore got included) turned up
391 matches. I have no idea on what you searched when using Google or
Google Groups. You said you got 16,000 matches. That's 33 times the
total matches that I got in Google and Google Groups. By the
description in the JSIINC article, it sure looks like I was on the money
that you have something MORE installed to provide additional features
for your keyboard than just the standard keyboard driver. It seems
weird that Toshiba would be using a 3rd party keyboard utility to get
full support for their embedded keyboard - unless, of course, it was
something you installed yourself.

(You are undoubtedly correct: unfortunately experience shows that it would
be even weirder if anyone at Toshiba knew anything about it)

 

[JAX]

The DUHHHHH has been overlooked, as has been the rest of your insignificant
little problems.

JAX

 

[JAX]

Well, perhaps I am not so much a Troll as I seem. Try the following link. It
"may" help.
http://www.input-drivers.com/companies/1066.htm

JAX

 

[Jupiter Jones [MVP]]

What you consider obvious is the type of thing posters ask in these
newsgroups all the time.
Often when the obvious is ignored because "The OP must have tried it"
is often the case when it was not tried.
If you have tried something, you should state what you did.
It is no fault to someone trying to help you when they suggest
something you tried when your original post was incomplete.

 

[Licensed to Quill]

I agree your point in general terms but all the info I needed to put in was
put in to the original post which was about how to manually restore earlier
registries in XP Pro in the event that System Restore was inoperative (which
apparenlty is often the case). No one knew, possibly because no one ANYWHERE
knows how to do this and MS is keeping it a complete mystery. (I ashed this
on MS help_and_suipport but no one at MS would let on how this was done)

We then moved on to trying to fix the problem by identifying it. But I can't
ask Toshiba because they have no technical support any more, merely
telephonists in India who pretend to listen carefully, pretend to think
carefully, ask you to wait while they "double check" that (Indistry-Speak
for they are just completely untrained telephonists who dont know ANY
answers but Toshiba don't want you to know this) and then tell everyone to
reinstall their Operating Systems from recovery discs. Added to that was the
fact that my computer seems to have had an upgrade from XP home to XP Pro at
some stage which would have left TOshiba completely baffled and telling me
to restore the Home OS. Following which advice would probably leave me
without any software at all.

Incidentally I do TEND to think that someone who had tried system restore
and lots of messages on google has also probalby also been through quite a
bit of self-hslp of the "delete keyboard from Dev Man if it isnt working and
reinstall" type but I agree, there are people who may not have put the
correct info in. (the DUH was because I cant see anyone knowing how to post
on a newsgroup but not knowing to call the name and 800 number engraved all
over their computers for assistance with those computers)

Present position is that I have done all required and reinstalled Easy
Button (which was one of the things I was told to do to get rid of the error
message) through its set up program AND reinstalled a standard PS2 keyboard
through device manager and there are still no exclamation marks but the
keyboard STILL isn't working

BTW Thanks you JAX for pointing me to
http://www.input-drivers.com/companies/1066.htm which doesn't identify any
particular keyboard driver for XP (or XP Pro) for my computer but which may
well be the only place I might find the driver I need. (Driverguide itself
may also be of assistance). Sorry for the Duh, - you weren't to know that
Toshiba dont have any TS, it's just that the manufacturer is always the
FIRST place to turn whenever anyone has a problem with anything (computers,
cars, washing machines etc), so your post mutually identified me as a
complete idiot by pretending that I might not have done this yet. I don't
necessarily identify not having a keyboard-type input device as
insignificant?

Licensed to Quill
TEXT OF ADVICE MESSAGE ON THIS ERROR MESSAGE FROM AE-CERTIFIED MS MVP
FOLLOWS (admittedly dated pre-SP2)
Hi Royce, "\\\DRI KBFiltr : The system cannot find the file specified" HP?
If so...try this fix by Troy: http://tinyurl.com/1uk0 If Toshiba Satellite
1905-S277:

"DRI KBFiltr : The system cannot find the file specified":

Check Add or Remove for a program called Easy Button and remove it.

If the above doesn't help: Go to Start/Run/Regedit and remove these two
keys:

HKEYLOCALMACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\i8042prt

HKEY LOCAL MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Kbdclass

-- Happy New Year, Kelly MS-MVP Win98/XP-Shell/User [AE-Windows XP]
Troubleshooting Windows XP http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp abc.htm

 

[Vanguard]

Doesn't assist (Microsoft told me it wouldn't)

Huh? Does that mean you tried using msconfig.exe? Or rebooting into
Safe mode? Someone told it these wouldn't work so you never bothered to
even try?

Also, you keep saying Microsoft told you this and told you that. You
are actually calling Microsoft technical support and spending the money
to have them give you no real solution? This newsgroups is NOT
Microsoft. No one from Microsoft inhabits these newsgroups. The news
servers (msnews.microsoft.com), if that is the one you are using, is
their property but you don't come here looking for free technical
support from Microsoft. This a peer community of users helping each
other. I don't work for Microsoft. You'll be damn hard pressed to find
anyone else here that works for Microsoft (and who visits here in the
capacity of a Microsoft employee). We are just a bunch of users of
varying levels of expertise asking questions and helping others.

That sort of message made me think that even if there isnt a keyboard
driver
for the special toshiba keyboard for my computer wihch admitttedly
DOES have
some special keys, there might be one for SOME toshiba keyboards which
might
get my computer working again? The trouble is (and this is another
reason
for that DUHHHHHH) that having dicontinued TS, their search engine is
so
useless that searching the Toshiba web site for a keyboard driver
reveals
nothing (I suspect there may well be one somewhere which is, again,
why I
posted here). The advice I was given to get rid of the (harmless)
error
message was to delete something called EZKEYBOARD from add/remove
programs
as well as some keys in the registry. I didnt back up because I
thought I
could rely on the SYstem Restore to get back to the day before's
registry:
(SYstem restore now doesnt work as I mentioned)

Unfortunately, the uninstall was not complete and left something around
looking for a utility file that doesn't exist anymore. And,
unfortunately, you've now learned that System Restore is not reliable
and that you need to start making backups or drive images to provide for
file or disaster recovery.

You never did say if removing the startup entry noted in the above
article helped or not (because you never said if you tried that
solution).

If the keyboard is not working at all, how are you managing to login (so
you can run regedit, device manager, use explorer, etc.)? If you can
login then the problem is occurring from your particular configuration
that gets loaded for your profile (and why using msconfig.exe or Safe
boot was suggested since you then get a cleaner login under your
profile). Have you tried logging in under Administrator instead of
under your own account?

 

[Licensed to Quill]

You never did say if removing the startup entry noted in the above
article helped or not (because you never said if you tried that
solution).

(I can teasily get into any of these programs with only the use of a mouse
and it's clickers)

If the keyboard is not working at all, how are you managing to login (so
you can run regedit, device manager, use explorer, etc.)?

I CAN use device manager which doenst seem to need entries from a keyboard
and which only needs clicking onto a postion on the screen to (for example)
install a keyboard driver.

If you can

login then the problem is occurring from your particular configuration
that gets loaded for your profile (and why using msconfig.exe or Safe
boot was suggested since you then get a cleaner login under your
profile). Have you tried logging in under Administrator instead of
under your own account?

(I AM the administrator)

The problem seems to derive from some incompatibility between installation
of SP2 and a keyboard driver which is embedded in EEPROM. SP2 seems to be
causeing some kind of incompatibility between the EEPROM and the OS.

However I have now backed out of it and the keyboard STILL doesnt work.
(BTW: Clearly I can't now use regedit or backup without a keyboard)

 

[Vanguard]

(I can teasily get into any of these programs with only the use of a
mouse
and it's clickers)
I CAN use device manager which doenst seem to need entries from a
keyboard
and which only needs clicking onto a postion on the screen to (for
example)
install a keyboard driver.

Okay, I guess I'm to assume that what you CAN do is what you DID.

If you can
(I AM the administrator)

Okay, then did you login under your regular account? The idea is to use
a different account profile than the one giving you the problems.
Hopefully you are NOT using the Administrator account as your personal
account. If you only have the Administrator account and the profile
gets corrupted then you don't have a good profile anymore to use for
logging in.

The problem seems to derive from some incompatibility between
installation
of SP2 and a keyboard driver which is embedded in EEPROM. SP2 seems to
be
causeing some kind of incompatibility between the EEPROM and the OS.

However I have now backed out of it and the keyboard STILL doesnt
work.
(BTW: Clearly I can't now use regedit or backup without a keyboard)

Sounds like your remaining option is to perform the in-place upgrade
mentioned before. I don't know if Toshiba provides a real copy of
Windows (i.e., they give you a installation CD that actually *installs*
Windows) or some drive image that wipes out everything in the partition.
It is a drive image, and if you have the room, then repartition the disk
(using PartitionMagic, BootIt NG, or the Ranish Partition Manager) to
move the current partition to the end of the disk and create a new
partition into which you copy the drive image. However, I don't know if
their restore of the drive image will handle a differently size
partition. It might just use the entire disk. In that case, you'll
want to get some drive imaging software, like DriveImage, Terabyte's
Image, or Acronis TrueImage, where you could save the drive image to
CD-R media, do the "restore" to reinstall Windows, and then use the
drive imaging software to extract your data files from your drive image
on the CD-Rs. What you have to do to save your data in your current
partition(s) depends on what Toshiba gave you to reinstall the operating
system. With a retail version of Windows (or a non-bastardized OEM
version with is the same as the retail version), you could do a parallel
install into another partition (after first resizing your old one,
moving it back, and creating a new one). I mention moving the old
partition back so the new partition will be physically numbered first
(i.e., it is the first partition). Otherwise, if you put the parallel
install in the 2nd partition, retrieved your data from your old first
partition, and then deleted the first partition to enlarge the 2nd
partition to consume the unallocated space now left open by your deleted
first partition, the boot.ini file in the old second partition which is
now the new first partition will still be pointing back to a second
partition that doesn't exist anymore.

 

[Licensed to Quill]

1. Toshiba only provides a recovery disc which wipes out all partitions (I
have backed up everything I need in MS BAckup as a .BKF file, or whatever
they use, onto the D drive but it will destroy that as well). I dont have
that disc any more and wouldn't dream of using one anyway. I do have
another 'retail' installation disc of XP Pro and wonder if I can use it if
2. there is this hardware issue which I can't resolve which involves
marrying up the OS to the drivers which reside in eprom. If I could
reinstall or recovery and marry up the EPROM drivers to the OS, surely there
must be some way to get the OS to marry up that Eprom driver to the OS at
THIS stage? (It sounds as if I could do all this re/overinstallation
business and still have a non working keyboard???)

If so, although this seems unlikely, why cant I just install XP into the D
drive adn then transfer everything over to the D drive (all software,
configurations etc) and then delete the C drive, expecting the D drive to
then become renamed C in default of there being a C drive there? (This
sounds too simplistic to be a likely proposition)