Lost Sys Info and Device Manager programs

While my computer seems to be operating normally, I no longer have access to System Information via start/accessories/system tools/system information.
I have also lost Device Manager. When I Right Click on My Computer and get System Properties, then click on hardware, then device manager, all I get is a blank page headed device manager.

I discovered all this when I had a printer error and tried to resolve. As it turned out the printer error was just that an error. I powered off the printer, then back on and alls well.

How do I restore the two programs I seem to have lost. I did a search and device manager came up with no results and sys info came up with just a shortcut, so it appears to me thjey are no longer on my computer. I did a system restore back two days but no change.

 

For the device manager problem click start>run and type services.msc and click OK. In the window that opens, find the plug and play service (not universal plug and play) and make sure it's enabled and set to automatic. If it's disabled, double click on it and where it says startup type choose automatic. Reboot the computer and see if device manager works.

I'm not sure about the system info thing. You can try clicking start>run and type msinfo32 and click ok. If system information opens you'll just have to make a new shortcut to it.
"C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\MSInfo "

If it doesn't open it may be that it too could affected by the plug and play service not running. I'm not really sure but it would seem to follow that if the device manager relies on it, system information might too. I wouldn't think it would remove the shortcut though. Anyway, if you get an error message when you try to run it, try again after enabling the plug and play service (if it isn't already enabled).

If you do receive an error message when running msinfo32, what is it?

 

Thanks Zander going to run and typing services.msc got the following error message after clicking OK.

"Unable to open service control manager database on. "
"Error 5: Access is denied. "

going to run and typing msinfo32 results in nothing happening.

 

My apologies for not responding to this sooner. Things just kept getting worse
and worse until I tried to do a repair-install which accomplished nothing. Had to ultimately reformat my HD and reinstall everything. A tech type with Hewlett Packard who had to help me reinstall my printer-scanner-copier all in one believes that the USB hub I was using got somehow corrupted and was sending garbage into the PC. Couldn't get the device installed until I unplugged from the hub and went dfirectly to a port on the PC, then everything worked fine.

Does it make sense to you or others posting here that a Powered USB Hub could cause all these problems?

 

Have never personally experienced anything like this before. Has anybody else ?

 

Well, the point was, and I perhaps did not make it clear, when trying to install from the CD-ROM the setup software could not find a USB hub and the install process would stop. The device is an HP 1210 all-in-one Printer-scanner-copier.

When I unplugged from the HUB and directly into a USB port the problem went away.

I used a hub because of a length-of-cable issue.

 

Hello Ricky,

when trying to install from the CD-ROM the setup software could not find a USB hub and the install process would stop.

My quess would be that the hub isn't self powered, the ports couldn't supply enough power, and if that's the case, your problem.

Regards - Charles

 

The hub is plugged in to 110 volts and all lights are lit.
It had been working well with the device for a year and a half prior to a hard drive failure.

I may be computer dumb in lots of ways but I know a powered hub when I see one.

 

Hello Ricky,

It was a guess - the problem your described is one that comes with un powered USB devices.

That might still be the problem - it just may not be working. Since the problem goes away once not used, a BIG possibilty then remains that there is something wrong with Hub, does it not

Regards - Charles

 

I have my Compact Flash Card reader plugged into the hub and works fine with it.

 

The problem with the scanner makes perfect sense to me. It's not all that uncommon for a device to act up when plugged into a hub but to work fine when plugged directly into the computer. For whatever reason, some devices seem to just prefer being plugged directly to the computer.

Your other problems though, I don't really see them being related to this. I suppose anything's possible but I've never seen a hub cause windows to lose things like that. Who knows? But your system info going missing doesn't seem to me to be related. If the hub caused something like that I find it highly unlikely the shortcut to it would be deleted. Not likely it had anything to do with the services thing either although it wouldn't surprise me if whatever zapped the system info also got the services. Guess it's all just speculation now though.

Also, I see you responded to my first post 6 days ago. Somehow I missed it and didn't realize you had posted a response. Not sure what's up with that as I do get notified when someone replies to one of my posts. Sorry about that. Didn't mean to leave you hanging. Kind of reminds me of something else. I must be getting old.

 

I had done a very thorough scan with several programs for malware and found nothing but a couple of tracking cookies. Just trying to understand what happened and why.

Is it something you guys find odd that a machine will start to lose one program after another. First Device Manager, then System Information, then my CD burner stopped working as the drive could not see a new and unused CD-RW in the drive.

Then the scanner stopped working and I decided that since I had most of what I wanted to save already on CD I would try the repair-install which accomplished absolutely zip, leaving me no choice to do to a re-install reformat which was very successful and, to my surprise left most of what I had in My Documents folders still intact.

Only thing is, now when I access any of them by clicking on My Documents and then the folder they show up under Documents and Settings. But, I can sure live with that.

Ah well, so it goes.

 

I don't know what you did but I don't think you formatted the disk. If you had, you'd have had nothing left from the old installation. Everything would have been gone. Unless (now that I think about it) you had previously moved your My Documents folder to a different drive. This doesn't really make much sense either though as it surely wouldn't show up in your documents and settings folder. Oh well, all's well that ends well I guess.

 

many have switches on them and they should be in the proper position. eg - many powered hubs also 'do' passive mode and have switch on them that 'sets' that or powered. read it's docs and also note that they CAN be bad and so can cabled ... or the printer itself for that matter.

 

who are u logged on as? what level is that account basically since u'r error is a privleges one.

 

Have you tried putting your powered hub in some other USB port? This USB port thing sometimes drives me crazy. Some devices work perfectly in one USB port and won't work on some other port. May be this is the problem you are facing. Just a wild guess.

 

skeet6961

I am and have been since I got this computer, logged on as System Administrator and, except for the time when the trouble I originally posted about started, have enjoyed those priviledges. I am as sure as I can be that was not the problem due to the fact that during all these problems, I was still shown as "Administrator ".

Anyway, the whole matter appears to be resolved now.

 

rsinfo

No I have not tried that, I just plugged my PSC device directly into a USB port. I will give that a try if other problems develop. Right now the only thing plugged into the hub is a Flash Card Reader and it works just fine.

 

Zander -

All I knows is that I did a reinstall of Win XP Pro which was supposed to erase anything previously on the HD and it did, everything except the My Documents folder and they were never switched to another drive.

Perhaps my terminology of reformat was incorrect but I was under the impression that a reinstall did just that.

Anyway, the whole darn thing is just too wierd for my 77 year old brain to grasp.

As you say, right now, all's well.