Can't get any devices working..

Hello, I am having many problems with external and internal devices (not)functioning on my laptop, and wondered if anyone can help me out.

Before I go into any detail, is there a course of action to take when you get the following error message when trying to install device drivers?

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Windows found software for your device but encountered an error while attempting to install it.

There is no driver selected for the device information set or element.
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Windows always tells you it can't do something, but never why, or what to do to rectify the situation. I can find many people having the same problem, but never any resolution.

I can not get any external devices to show up (even plug and play with no driver requirement). I have tried;

An external hard-drive
a USB stick
generic compact flash card reader

and so on, I can get none of them to work on this operating system.

Any hardware I plug in brings up the found new hardware wizard, which never finds the driver and shows the error message stated above.

Of course I have tried manually downloading drivers (where available) but whenever I point the wizard to said driver, I get the same result.

This is also happening with internal devices for instance, my webcam which has stopped working. When I try to reinstall the driver I get:

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Windows was unable to install your HP webcam

Windows could not find driver software for your device
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(this is after manually pointing the wizard directly to the driver).:confused

So I have absolutely no idea where to go with this problem, it has been like this for months and I have not found a fix in all that time.

I would just reformat if I could do a backup to an external drive, but can not get windows to recognize any device to transfer files off my laptop. So this situation sucks, I don't know what to do.

I am using a HP Compaq Presario running Windows Vista home basic with SP1 and my operating system is 32bit.

I wish I still had my macbook pro, I hate windows. :-D

Thank you brilliant people in advance.

Mo

 

Hey, thanks for the reply. There are three devices under "other devices" with yellow triangles/exclamation point. The devices are;

Unknown device
HP Webcam-101
HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-T50L ATA Device


The laptop model is Compaq Presario CQ70-211EM.

Thanks

 

Was the laptop purchased with the current Windows installation already on it?

If so, how old is it and is it still in warranty?

Just in case this is a big problem, make sure you have a backup of everything you want to keep from the laptop. I'm not saying it will be a big problem, just that backups are a good idea in any case.

 

Hello both, sorry I have taken my time replying (been moving house).

To address your questions;

collinsl *Was the laptop purchased with the current Windows installation already on it?



Yes, I got the laptop second hand with Vista home basic pre-installed.
I am not sure how old it was when I bought it, maybe a year or two and I have had it since May 2009(ish). I think I can safely say it is no longer covered by any warranty.

Yes I know, and this is one of my major problems: I can not do a backup as I can't get windows to recognize any external devices to transfer the backup data (to an external drive etc). I know a reformat would be the way to go, but I can't do that until I have backed up! See my dilemma?

Any suggestions about this error message:

"Windows found software for your device but encountered an error while attempting to install it.

There is no driver selected for the device information set or element."

It seems to be a common problem, yet I can find no solution.

Anyway, thanks very much for your time and input. I genuinely appreciate the help.

Any suggestions more than welcome.

 

Greetings, Motoko...

You might consider booting to a live Linux distro and transferring any data you wish to save to a flash drive - assuming, of course, that any USB ports will function correctly in the Linux environment...

Also, you've mentioned a 'reformat' a couple of times - does this mean that you are in possession of a valid Windows disk? If so, you may be able to run some repair routines with that disk...

 

Hi again, I can't use my disk drive to repair or reformat as it is one of the devices which I can not get to work. As I initially stated, I can not get windows to install drivers for anything (both external and internal devices). My CD drive/webcam do not have drivers and when I try to install manually I get error code:

So I really don't have many options to back up. Also I know nothing about linux, would I need to partition my hard-drive and dual boot to do this? This would be an absolute last resort, but worth a try if there are no other options.

What does that error code I am getting actually mean.. Is there no way for me to fix this manually?

 

Hey, I just tried a scan on the HP site (installed firefox plugin etc) it got to 100% then showed me the following with no other info:

Should I just throw my laptop out of the window? :-D

Basically though even if it did find drivers, vista plays dumb and tells me it can not find them/install them. Even when I point the wizard directly to the driver folder. Have any of you come across this before? Shall I just give up on this and save up for a Mac?

 

See if downloading and installing the Chipset driver for your computer helps.

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...dlc=en&lc=en&os=2093&product=3879634&sw_lang=

Are you trying to get data off of this computer? If you download Puppy linux which runs totally in RAM you could connect the external USB drive and see if Puppy detects it. If it does, it is very easy to transfer the data files from your laptop to the external drive.

Puppy can be downloaded here. It is an iso file and you will need access to a computer that can burn CD's. Use Imgburn to burn the iso and then boot the laptop. Here is a very good guide on transferring files with Puppy.

http://help.artaro.eu/index.php/win...vista/recover-files-from-hard-disk-vista.html