ad2326

Hi All,

Ive searched and searched for an answer to this problem affecting my girlfriends laptop, but with no luck ive decided to consult the gurus!

First the specs:

Compaq Presario F500 Notebook PC
Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 & All Windows Updates installed
2GB RAM
AMD Athlon 64 X2 TK53 Processor
NVIDIA® GeForce™ Go 6100

All patches from Compaq's support website installed including BIOS, Chipset and compatibility issues.


She initially noticed the problem when trying to get her iPod Shuffle 2nd Gen to work with her laptop. When plugging in the installers came up as normal, but after a while a popup appears:

"Windows found driver software for your device but encountered a problem while trying to install it."

"USB Mass storage device"
"The requested device registry key does not exist"

I've tried going into Device Manager and choosing to manually find drivers, which does make Vista find "USB Mass Storage Device", but this always leads back to the above popup. I've also tried deleting the INFCACHE file, to no avail.

I tried copying some files from my XP machine using my Freecom USB stick, and had the exact same problems with that. Does this suggest its not a problem with the iPod drivers, but with the USB Mass Storage Device drivers within Windows?

As one forum suggested while i was searching I tried going to device manager and uninstalling the "USB Root Hub" entries, but after a restart, Windows couldn't reinstall those either! It gave the same "The requested device registry key does not exist" error.

Also something to note, they do have a Vista PC in their household which detects the iPod and other devices without a problem, but i cant find any differences in service packs and updates between the two.

Could it be a corrupt registry? When I manually point my Freecom USB Stick to the USB Mass Storage device driver, Vista says its ok and registers that it's digitally signed and everything, but when I click next it just can't find the registry key.

Does anyone know which registry key i should check and/or how to insert it into the registry if needed?

Any help greatly appreciated!
Thanks
Adam

ad2326

<Bump>


if i may

dai

in the device manager click on view at the top and in the dropdown
show hidden devices
then uninstall all listed usb items
turn the computer off
unplug usb plugs
reboot twice
replug in the usb plugs

ad2326

thanks for your reply dai,

just wanted to check, when you say remove all usb plugs, do you mean unplug the USB devices from the ports, not disconnect the ports themselves?

and am i correct in assuming I uninstall everying listed in device manager under the "Universal Serial Bus Controllers" heading?


Ill give it a try next time i visit my girlfriends house, should uninstalling the hidden devices avoid the problems I had when i only removed the USB Root Hub devices?

thanks again

dai

yes just items plugged in
i.e.
mouse
external drives ect.
all usb listings in the device manager if you miss one you will have to do it over again

ad2326

hi Dai,

sorry for the delay, ive managed to try your suggestion and a few others but im still having the same problem.

when i removed all USB entries (plus hidden) from Dev Manager, after the first reboot the installer came up to put them back but i got the exact same error for each of those too "The requested device registry key does not exist". Same on the second reboot. I've used System restore since then to put me back to square one.

Ive tried other things that worked for other users in the past, such as pointing the installer manually to C:\windows\system32, and to C:\windows\winsxs, and copying new USBSTOR.INF and USBSTOR.SYS files from the Driverstore folder, all to no avail.

it kind of seems that windows is finding the files (namely USBSTOR.SYS ans USBSTOR.INF, starting the install process, but its the registry that's stopping it, like the files are there but theres some related registry key that is missing.

any further ideas? other than wait for Win 7..........

thanks again!
Adam

dai

are you running the install with admin rights

ad2326

yes there is only one user on the PC and it is an administrator account, is there a way to log into the administrator account through safe mode like there was in XP??

thanks

Klint

When was the last time you checked for updates on your machine?? I know I fixed a computer a while back with this problem, an update fixed it.

Klint

also another thing you can try is going out to the manufacturers website an downloading a driver, they are normally pretty good about having them for this kind of situation.

dai

the actual admin account on vista is hidden you right click on the file and run with admin priviledges

ad2326

sorry for the hold up on this thread.... my gf's laptop is used for her open university course and so she doesnt want to do a full re-install (my next step) until her summer break when she can back up all her work.

will post findings when I can re-assure her its a safe process!!

Cheers

dai

check if it offers a non destructive restore option