plug'n'play needs "Scan For Hardware Changes" in device manager beforeshowing new devices

[Geoff Winkless]

Hi

I have a (new-to-me) Thinkpad laptop which I've reinstalled clean XP
from the IBM disks.

Everything seems fine except that plug-and-play items (like the hotswap
CF disk and USB devices) don't show up automatically.

eg if I plug in my USB card reader to my XP desktop it normally
recognises the device, loads the driver and populates "My Computer" with
4 devices for the 4 card slots. On the laptop it simply does nothing
until I click "Scan For Hardware Changes" in Device Manager, upon which
everything continues as normal.

It's not a problem I've come across before and I can't think of what
terms to search the web... I don't even know which part of the system to
start working on, I'm pretty-much stumped.

There are no yellow or unknown devices in Device Manager and everything
seems fine apart from this issue.

For what it's worth I tried removing all the USB devices from Device
Manager and then refreshing them but it made no difference. The fact
that the builtin CF card reader exhibits the same behaviour (it appears
as an IDE drive so I assume it doesn't use USB at all) suggests that
it's not related to the USB anyway.

Any suggestions appreciated.

Geoff

 

[Geoff Winkless]

plug-and-play items (like the hotswap CF disk and USB devices) don't show up automatically.

eg if I plug in my USB card reader to my XP desktop it normally
recognises the device, loads the driver and populates "My Computer"
with 4 devices for the 4 card slots. On the laptop it simply does
nothing until I click "Scan For Hardware Changes" in Device Manager,
upon which everything continues as normal.

In a moment of clarity I checked the event log and found a reference to
WRN_FACTORY_UI_SUPPRESSED - so a quick web search brought up

http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/thread-626188.php

which suggests running

sysprep -reseal -activated -nosidgen

This (eventually) did the trick.

Hope this post helps anyone in a similar position.

Geoff