Dear Colleagues,
I started working in tech support covering network and usb devices. I am often finding drivers
having difficulty loading properly and most perplexing of all, Windows at times does not even see
drivers on its own WindowsCD!
What I check for in Device Manager:
Yellow exclamation marks
Red Xs not intentionally disabled
Items in Other Devices
Duplications like 5 keyboards etc. (in safe mode)
Old drivers from devices no longer used (in safe mode)
IRQ bunching – devices loading up on some IRQs while others are empty
I often see devices bunching, especially on IRQ9 or 11. At least monthly, I see at least 6 devices
on one IRQ with at least three IRQs empty. Seems especially pronounced on laptops. Isthis really
a problem? Toshiba claims no problem. Worst case had 9 on IRQ9 and 5 IRQs empty. His computer
wouldn’t see drivers on the floppy disk. I told him to call Dell for help redistributing IRQs.
Once done, he called again and no problem installing the NIC. Toshiba however, refuses to help and
says it’s a device problem as the computer works otherwise.
Solutions that sometimes work:
remove conflict items in Device Manager (safe mode)
remove duplicate and old items(safe mode)
temporarily disable most drivers such as modem, NIC…
redistribute IRQs
when not finding file, point to folder, back, point…
copy off floppy to HD folder
copy .inf to \windows\inf; .sys to \windows\system
There is nothing consistant though! I need to get down to the core issues, hard evidence rather
than theories. Specifically:
1) Why does Windows sometimes not even see the .inf file?
2) Why do IRQs bunch up? Is it really not a problem as Toshiba claims?
3) Are I/O and Base addresses also a culprit? If so, how does one deal with them?
4) Other influences not mentioned?
5) Windows only or other OSs too (Mac, Linux, O/S2)?
