Phantom Device

  • Thread starter Thread starter woodsonlateral
  • Start date Start date
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woodsonlateral

Hello!

I recently had to do a rebuild of my XP system. It was on one hard
drive broken into two partitions. I backed up information to D and
reformatted C. All was well but XP keeps wanting to reinstall a PCI
Device I removed months ago. How can this happen and how do I stop
this?

Thanks!
 
Hi,

If you reformatted, then it would only try to install devices that are
currently attached to the system. It cannot attempt to reinstall something
whose existance it is not aware of. I suspect maybe your are doing a repair
installation, or perhaps trying to run software that you had previously
backed up to D? The former shouldn't pick up any devices that were
previously removed, but the latter is not a good idea in that it can
possibly look for information that no longer exists. Only data from D should
be used, programs should be reinstalled from the original installation
media. Another thought would be to allow the attempt to go through and fail
so the system knows there is no such device, or possibly disable that
particular pci slot in the system bios.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
 
Well, I did a CLEAN install but when it was reloading, it kept
recovering "orphaned" files. Could this be a problem? That device it
keeps finding was removed months before the reinstall. So I can't for
the life of me figure out why it keeps trying to reload.
 
garak0410 said:
Well, I did a CLEAN install but when it was reloading, it kept
recovering "orphaned" files. Could this be a problem? That device it
keeps finding was removed months before the reinstall. So I can't for
the life of me figure out why it keeps trying to reload.
Click to expand...

Honestly, it doesn't sound like you did a clean install. Go to this link
and read the instructions for doing a clean install. If you did
something different, then you didn't do a clean install.

http://michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html

Malke
 
Recovering orphaned files is not a clean install. A parallel install maybe,
but not a clean install to a formatted disk.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
 
Well, the system is running great! I just need to rid the system from
trying to install a card that isn't there. Any other suggestions?
 
garak0410 said:
Well, the system is running great! I just need to rid the system from
trying to install a card that isn't there. Any other suggestions?
Click to expand...

Fine, in Device Manager show all hidden devices ("phantoms"). Find the
PCI device that Windows keeps trying to install and disable it.

Malke
 
Hi,

PCI devices upon a fresh install generally has to do with a modem/wav. If
you are not using a dial up modem, physically remove it from your system.
If this is not the case, more info. As you claim you uninstalled it months
ago ---- what is/was it? Other than that, disable non-used onboard items
via the bios/cmos.

--

All the Best,
Kelly (MS-MVP/DTS&XP)

Taskbar Repair Tool
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/taskbarplus!.htm
 
It was an AVerDVD EZMaker WDM Video Capture card. I removed it 3-4
months before doing a clean install last week of XP. It still shows
installed and it wants to install additional drivers for it each time I
boot up.

I did choose clean install and did a full reformat and not a quick one.
For some reason, it recovered orphaned files for my D partition but C
was still new and clean. All is well except for this phantom device.

Thanks again!
 
OK...here is the very latest. VERY embarrassed to say but that one card
was still in there. I removed it and any references to it and rebooted.
Now, I still get FOUND NEW HARDWARE for a PCI Input Device and I can
assure you I have no idea what it wants. Suggestion?

Also, before I reformatted, I was using a demo of Adobe Premiere and on
the rebuild, I purchased and loaded Premiere elements. On the D
partition, there is a Premiere and Projects folder and I can't access
or delete them. Other suggestions?

Thanks!
 
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