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Unknown Hardware on Windows Startup

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6 replies

by john

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Having recently installed an HP Photosmart 7762 printer and had a lot of problems with it, I decided to return the printer and now have a Canon i865 instead. The HP printer was uninstalled as per the HP manual. However, after uninstalling the printer, each time my system boots into Windows (98SE), after trying to connect to the other PCs on my LAN, I am presented with four separate sets of dialogs advising that Windows has found "Unknown Hardware", followed by a dialog to install drivers. I cannot identify which drivers are needed and when I check Device Manager, there are no yellow markers. My system seems otherwise to be working OK (if a little slowly). Can someone please advise me how I can either identify the "missing" hardware and install the necessary drivers or advise me how to get rid of the dratted messages> Thanks in advance. John

6 replies

by thechas

You might try the utility available from HP.

http://tinyurl.com/zk0y

What I do is edit the system files and registry to remove all traces of old hardware.

DO NOT edit these files UNLESS you know what you are doing.
Improper edits can cause your system to not boot.

Another safer option, is to use a registry cleanup utility such as Norton WinDoctor, or V-Com Fix-It.

Both do a fairly decent job of removing links to old software and hardware.

Chas

by john

Thanks Chas.

I do have and have used WinDoctor as part of Norton SystemWorks but it has not corrected the problem with the hardware wizard popping up 4 times at startup. I think I'm going to have to re-install Win98. Maybe I'll just take the opportunity to move to XP!

Thanks for your help,
John

by niseys

Win98 has been notorious for system device
'duplications' where sometimes removing the
device just puts everything back in.

On occasion, registry removal of the 'enum'
folder location under the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
registry area will remove 'all' listed devices
and rebooting the machine allows windows to
put things back in order.

Unfortunately, this does not always work as in
my cases where the 'motherboard resources' device
loves to multipl itself two or more times.

You must also boot into safe mode when checking
Device Manager for duplications. I have found
six hard drives, four cd-roms, six 'ide controllers' and a number of other items where
you may find more duplications of the printer.

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