vista not auto detecting devices

[skanky]

not sure what i've done to it, but when i put in say a usb key, normally it would automatically find the drivers, but now i have to manually point it to c:\windows\system32 the first time a new device is installed.

what do i need doing to fix that?

 

[skanky]

oh fs!

reinstalled, did all the update/installed my software and its come back again! a weird side effect is that normally if i winkey+pause, the device manager shortcut on the left side pane, doesnt open device manager but if i go into advanced settings, hardware, device manager, it works fine.

its not a big deal but the prompting for drivers thing is not acceptable.

i dont know if its something on windows update screwing me or something else. with hindsight, i probably should've reboot after each program install to see what was causing it but didnt think software was the problem.

 

[skanky]

well i'm going through yet another reinstall but doing things bit by bit this time (install few apps, reboot, test) and then making a ghost image of it so i can fall back on a backup.

i wanna find out why this i, because if breaks the device manager link the system properties, then who knows what else it has broken that i cant see but might be vital.

i think whatever it is that is breaking the dev manager link is also breaking the auto driver install.

i also notice that hibernate goes missing in the shutdown menu but on a fresh install, its there but if i set the shutdown button to hibernate, it still "works" --i assume it works, i dont get any sort of hibernate screen just a black screen instead..

 

[skanky]

found the cause of the device manager thing breaking, its a imageshack quickloader of all things breaking it!

the usb problem slipped by me again, cant be bothered with that anymore and i hope ms fix that with sp1, as its annoying having to manually point to \windows\system32 three times to detect a new hdd!