Trying to repeatedly install and remove software and drivers supplied by other hardware manufacturers under non-US Vista x86/x64 versions [Does this mean en-AU, en-UK would be affected?], a WMI/OEM driver database corruption may occur.
As a result of this damage, you could have serious problems installing new devices such as a simple USB mouse, a DVD-ROM, a PS/2 keyboard and whatever is normally detected and initialized with standard Windows drivers. [This is the problem I am now having]
This problem has been classified by Microsoft as KB934637 and there are small fixes for both x86 and x64 versions, but they’re not available with WindowsUpdate and will be included in the first Vista Service Pack.
If you’re in urgent need to fix this issue, you should contact Microsoft Technical Support (if you purchased a retail/boxed Vista version) or your PC manufacturer (if you have a pre-installed OEM version).
Another workaround is to force Windows Vista rebuilding that database, because it’s not a pre-compiled file, but generated during Windows Vista setup process by reading all of the INF and PNF files located %systemroot%\INF folder of your system hard disk.
At the end of the setup process, the drivers database files are locked to prevent unauthorized access and you can’t delete/rename/move them, but OS does its access each time we add or remove new hardware and drivers, and it adds or removes some records and fields.
So here is what you have to do:
- Insert your Vista setup DVD and boot your PC from that by pressing any key when prompted.
- When it ask you for your language, be sure only to choose the one matching your current keyboard layout and click “Next”.
- Windows is ready to install, you need to select the “REPAIR YOUR COMPUTER” option, in the lower left corner of the window.
- System Recovery will look for installed operating systems, once your correct OS has been found, select it and then click “Next”.
- A quick scan for common problems will start: if something wrong is found you’ll be prompted for an automatic system restore, that you shall abort by clicking the “Cancel” button.
- Now you should see the “System Recovery Options” window, select “Command Prompt” and prepare for a tasty DOS session
- Go in your system disk by typing C: (or the letter corresponding to your system disk, followed by a colon)
- Reach your INF system folder by typing:CD %systemroot%\INF
- Set a variable to let the file listing being sorted by extension (file type) and then by name, with folders grouped at the top by typing the following command:SET DIRCMD=/p /a /ogen
- Now, let’s get the files list: type DIR and you should see an enormous amount of INF and PNF files, a bunch of subfolders and a few files having different extension and a really recent date. If this is the case, we’re nearly there…
- Now for the ownership, enter each one of the following commands with care and being sure that your command prompt is pointing to %systemroot%\INF folder:DEL DRVINDEX.DAT
DEL INFPUB.DAT
DEL INFSTOR.DAT
DEL INFSTRNG.DAT
DEL INFCACHE.*
DEL SETUPAPI.*
As the files do not have +r +s set on attribs, you shouldn’t receive any errors.
- When finished, type EXIT and the command prompt window will close itself.
- Click the “RESTART” button and remove Vista Setup DVD from your optical drive. Now, by having completely destroyed the built-in database, Windows will launch its rebuild at the first time you’ll plug a new Plug’n'Play peripheral or when you’ll start the “Add new hardware” procedure in Control Panel.
I’d love to credit the original author, but having gone through so many links, my history is a nightmare to navigate.
NOTE: I am not responsible for any loss of functionality, data, time or sanity the above list may cause. You alone take full ownership of the problem. The steps listed may or may not result in frequent and lengthy periods of profanity…