Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Windows Vista / USB Device Detection Problems



During the initial installation of a USB device (most often external drives, although not always), Windows Vista does not locate or install drivers for the device.
Windows Vista might report that there is “no driver found for you device” and/or will not display the pre-installed Vista OEM drivers. Even by manually selecting the driver, you will still get the “no driver found…” error.  This is most likely caused by a corrupted INFCACHE.1 file. This file stores the location of drivers and their INF files. This file is hidden, has restricted access, and can be found in “c:\windows\inf”.
Delete the INFCACHE.1 file and it will force Windows to rebuild the INFCACHE.1 file the next time Windows searches for drivers. To delete this file, you have to set the security permissions of it to allow Full Control for the User Group Administrators or full control for your user account. Please follow the directions below:


1. Open a Windows Explorer window by right clicking on Start and then clicking on Explore.


2. In the address bar, type C:\windows\inf and press Enter.


3. Find and then right click on the file named INFCACHE


4. Select Properties.


5. Click on the Security tab.


6. Click on Edit to edit the permissions of the file.


7. Click on Add to add User Groups.


8. Type Administrators in the User Groups field and click on OK.


9. Set Administrators to Full Control and click on OK.


10. Move or delete the file INFCACHE.1.


11. Reinstall a device to force Windows to rebuild the INFCACHE.1 file (DO NOT reinstall the same external hard drive     that you were having issues detecting before. Please connect another USB device other than the one that Vista had an issue detecting).


This detection issue can happen several times in a row, but repeat the steps 1-11 and try again until this works.


this *only* applies to Vista (all editions, x86 and x64) but not to XP, or any other version of Windows.


source: http://www.thedave.ca/geek/windows-vista-usb-device-detection-problems/



Friday, January 20, 2012

Win 7 update fix for 8E5E03FA error



1. Restart your computer into safe mode.

2. Login using the Administrators account

3. In Start, Accessories, right click on Command Prompt, and click on Run as Administrator

4. In DOS type:  net stop cryptsvc

5. Press enter and wait for the computer to say its stop this service

6. Close DOS and remain in Windows Safe Mode.

7. Go into My computer and navigate to your Windows directory

8. Find the folder c:\windows\software distribution and remove the contents, but not the folder it’s self

9. Then navigate to c:\windows\system32\catroot2 folder and remove the content of that folder

10. Right click on the catroot2 folder and rename it to catroot3

11. Restart windows and login as normal.

12. Once logged into windows run Windows Update from the Start menu. Download and install updates as normal.

source: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/itprovistasetup/thread/b6ee93a6-4629-4605-9b76-6e48397c37a0

Fix for Fallout 3 game crash


Open up the fallout.ini file in:


 My Documents\My Games\Fallout3 




Find the line: 


bUseThreadedAI=0 


change it to: 


bUseThreadedAI=1 


Add another line after it and insert: 


iNumHWThreads=2 


This will limit the game to 2 cores and prevent the engine bug from causing the game to freeze.


*If the game still crashes write this iNumHWThreads=1


Source: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-1328904.html