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General discussion

Windows Plug and Play on Intel dq965gf motherboards

by tkredman Jul 16, 2007 1:59AM PDT

I am setting up several new PCs for one of the departments where I work and encountering a peculiar problem on some of them. We buy our machines from a local vendor, which periodically changes motherboards and the latest machines have been using the Intel DQ965GF motherboard. The system specs go something like:

2.13Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo
Intel DQ965GF mATX (on-board Ethernet, Video, and Audio)
1GB 667 Mhz DDR2 RAM
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 80GB SATA-II
Windows XP SP2

The PCs are delivered with the latest BIOS, and we have installed all of the latest chipset/audio/video drivers for the motherboard.

The problem is that when the machines are setup and drivers installed, plug and play detects, but does not automatically install, the drivers. Initially the device manager shows 10-12 "Unknown Devices." The solution is very simple: simply right click each device, click "Update Driver" and let windows do its magic and install each device. The devices that it detects and installs are the processor, motherboard resources, PCI bus, and USB host controllers and hubs.

At this point we'd like to think that everything works, but we encountered further problems after delivering some of the machines. Any new hardware that the user has, such as USB mouse/keyboard, jump drive, or external hard drive has to be manually installed via using the previous steps in the device manager. The fix is simple, but it means that for most users, I.T. has to be called every time they get a new printer or bring in their jump drive for the first time. This problem has occurred on 7 of 9 machines we have received. All of them have identical hardware.

It appears that while Windows XP's plug and play service is running and detecting hardware, it never tries to install the hardware itself, even if it has drivers installed. The user is never even prompted with the "Add New Hardware" wizard when Windows first boots.

I have researched this problem considerably but have found nothing. I've tried restarting Window's Plug and Play services with no luck, and the motherboard does not appear to have an "on/off" setting for its plug and play support. Has anyone else encountered this problem, or is anyone able to point me in the right direction?

Thanks,
Travis

Discussion is locked

2 Posts

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Does that to me too.

by r. proffitt Former Forum moderator Jul 16, 2007 3:48AM PDT

Just sharing.

This is one of those "Windows Annoyances" that irks me. I have these USB to RS232 devices I use a lot of. I install the driver and plug in this device. XP finds and installs it. Works!

Now I move the same device to another USB port and Windows jumps up and installs it yet again. I find I have to put it on all the USB ports and let Windows install it each time in case I head out and don't have the driver CD with me and I forget which port I connected to.

-> This is not a very smart OS.

Bob

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Simple fix

by tkredman Jul 16, 2007 6:54AM PDT

As is usually the case, I find the solution to my problem shortly after typing out a lengthy post.

For future reference, a simple registry key was causing all of the problems. In HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup, the key "FactoryInstallInProgress" was set to 1. Apparently after copying over an image created with Windows Sysprep, the flag was not getting turned off or removed. Essentially, Windows believed that it was constantly in a hardware installation state and put on hold any new hardware installations. I discovered this only after noticing that the Add Hardware Wizard refused to run on all machines because I "can only install one device at a time" despite the fact that I wasn't installing any hardware at the time.

Deleting this key followed by a quick reboot fixed everything.

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