J
Jeff W
Hi - I'm not a developer, but I'm a rather sophisticated user, and I
have spent literally days trying to solve a problem on my XP machine.
I'm not even looking for help here, just some information that I have
been unable to get from books, the web, or support that I -think- you
guys must know. You can skip to the question below if you want, but
please, can you help me? I'm desperate at this point....
First: I design computer chips by trade, but I've done WIN2K IT
support, written a lot of C code, and built and maintained 5 WIN98SE
machines at home, one of which (P-III 733MHz, 256MB) I recently upgraded
to XP Home SP2. My machines are heavily virus-checked, malware-checked,
and there's nothing on them that I don't want to be there.
My problem: Often (and the circumstances vary, which make it maddening)
when I go through the add-new-hardware wizard to install a driver, the
following happens: Nothing out of the ordinary occurs, it finds the
driver, copies it successfully to the a windows subfolder (usually
system32/drivers - I check later and the file is there), and then says
"An error occurred....The system was unable to find the specified file".
Occasionally, the device is found successfully on the next Reboot
anyway, although sometimes it comes up disabled, but once I enable it
things are fine. BUT, usually the installation it hosed, and the system
just wants to try to install the driver again....
What I have tried already: Repair Install, system File Check, carefully
removing and re-installing all my drivers, safe mode install, different
USB port (for USB devices, where the problem happens most often), remove
all APPs that use USB drivers and re-install. Full Mcafee 8.0 Virus
check, Full AdAware 6.1 malware check, chkdisk. Believe me guys, the
system is clean. No one at any tech support (including Microsoft) can
tell me what the system is trying to tell me when it displays this error
message. Hopefully someone here knows?
My question: Does anyone know what WINXP -does- after it copies the
file and before it's done with the process? Perhaps it tries to modify
some sort of .INI or .INF file (that's corrupted on my system?) , or
some set of (now corrupted?) registry keys. I'm thinking if i can
uninstall all related drivers, delete the corrupted entity, and start
over, things will be fine. As it is, on an otherwise wonderful system,
I dread having to replace a NIC, add a USB card, or even try to attach a
new MP3 player, as the system just doesn't want to accept new drivers
without a fight.
Any and all suggestions welcome. I'm not looking for a solution, just a
plan of attack.
Thanks!
/j
have spent literally days trying to solve a problem on my XP machine.
I'm not even looking for help here, just some information that I have
been unable to get from books, the web, or support that I -think- you
guys must know. You can skip to the question below if you want, but
please, can you help me? I'm desperate at this point....
First: I design computer chips by trade, but I've done WIN2K IT
support, written a lot of C code, and built and maintained 5 WIN98SE
machines at home, one of which (P-III 733MHz, 256MB) I recently upgraded
to XP Home SP2. My machines are heavily virus-checked, malware-checked,
and there's nothing on them that I don't want to be there.
My problem: Often (and the circumstances vary, which make it maddening)
when I go through the add-new-hardware wizard to install a driver, the
following happens: Nothing out of the ordinary occurs, it finds the
driver, copies it successfully to the a windows subfolder (usually
system32/drivers - I check later and the file is there), and then says
"An error occurred....The system was unable to find the specified file".
Occasionally, the device is found successfully on the next Reboot
anyway, although sometimes it comes up disabled, but once I enable it
things are fine. BUT, usually the installation it hosed, and the system
just wants to try to install the driver again....
What I have tried already: Repair Install, system File Check, carefully
removing and re-installing all my drivers, safe mode install, different
USB port (for USB devices, where the problem happens most often), remove
all APPs that use USB drivers and re-install. Full Mcafee 8.0 Virus
check, Full AdAware 6.1 malware check, chkdisk. Believe me guys, the
system is clean. No one at any tech support (including Microsoft) can
tell me what the system is trying to tell me when it displays this error
message. Hopefully someone here knows?
My question: Does anyone know what WINXP -does- after it copies the
file and before it's done with the process? Perhaps it tries to modify
some sort of .INI or .INF file (that's corrupted on my system?) , or
some set of (now corrupted?) registry keys. I'm thinking if i can
uninstall all related drivers, delete the corrupted entity, and start
over, things will be fine. As it is, on an otherwise wonderful system,
I dread having to replace a NIC, add a USB card, or even try to attach a
new MP3 player, as the system just doesn't want to accept new drivers
without a fight.
Any and all suggestions welcome. I'm not looking for a solution, just a
plan of attack.
Thanks!
/j