XP built in device driver database

[Steve Parry]

I appear to have lost the database of built in device drivers, everything
seems to be working fine but any attempt to add new hardware results in
failing to find drivers, despite them being hardware that doesnt require
external drivers (usb keys etc that work fine on other XP machines)

Even swapping to another usb slot with an existing device results in failure

In fact if you try to manually upgrade the drivers of an existing device the
device type sections are there but no devices are shown below.

Device Manager appears to be working fine it's just the lists of alternative
hardware isnt there anymore .... any ideas?

 

[Steve Parry]

I appear to have lost the database of built in device drivers, everything
seems to be working fine but any attempt to add new hardware results in
failing to find drivers, despite them being hardware that doesnt require
external drivers (usb keys etc that work fine on other XP machines)

Even swapping to another usb slot with an existing device results in
failure

In fact if you try to manually upgrade the drivers of an existing device
the device type sections are there but no devices are shown below.

Device Manager appears to be working fine it's just the lists of
alternative hardware isnt there anymore .... any ideas?

I've resolved it. In case similar happens to you check the value of

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Devicepath

Should have %SYSTEMROOT%\inf in it, mine had additional locations also, whic
from the paths I assume Dell put in but the %systemroot%\inf was missing the
leading %s so could'nt be resolved .

All working now