Help! XP quickies (Troubleshooting for Sister)

[BlueFalcon]

Hi there, troubleshooting for my Sister ...need help.

Essentially,

Modem Drivers corrupted (as said in XP Error message at the end of each Driver install attempt) even though different and newly Dloaded drivers used. Suspected Dead/faulty Modem. But, tried a totally different Modem... with same results. Both Modems respond with device info to a ModemPoll App (Conexant).

Scanned with AVG, AVast, Norton AV 2K4, Spybot, AdAware. all with updated defs. Nada.

Curiously did notice that ALL folders are marked Read only. Thought that was fishy. Not like that in my W98SE.... but she is running XP Pro SP2.

Her 12yo son is most likely the cause ....Dloading games & whatnot all willy nilly. ( THAT will rest assuredly END post haste, heh, for Uncle Tech Support is tired of cleaning up his shat. lol. oops sorry.)

So my questions are:

Does XP normally have all folders marked as Read Only? (perhaps a SP2 measure?)
Ever hear of Spyware/malware corrupting modem Driver installs?



Sidenote: XP at first seemed to be auto installing the same auto detected Modem driver.....which then always sprouted the "There was a problem installing your HardWare...the Driver is damaged or corrupted"...etc.

Searched the INF folder for the Text of the ID string of modem....and in turn moved those .INF files to diff location...so that I could point to & install newly Dloaded driver. Still same results.
Tried different modem with it's own drivers. Same results.

Made sure to disable SW modem option in BIOS ..... as this is a PCI card. ( I believe that option is for AMR modems)



Any suggestions?

 

[ColKurtz]

Does XP normally have all folders marked as Read Only? (perhaps a SP2 measure?)

No. Unless someone just dragged and dropped a folder from CD to the HDD, and even then it would only be a couple/few folders. Are you sure it's the whole drive? Weird.

Ever hear of Spyware/malware corrupting modem Driver installs?

Not specifcally, but no real reason they couldn't. Have you tried deleting all modem entries from device manager? Is this an internal or external modem. If it's external, your problem might be a com port problem rather than a modem driver.

 

[BlueFalcon]

It's a Internal PCI modem.

Hmmm, your XP doesn't have Read only set on all folders?.....me thinks the 12yo kid has been fluxin around with folder properties.
Might interfere with driver installs.... if the OS can't well, write to the system folders. LOL. How the heck did this thang even boot? Strange, I think I installed updated versions of some of the above Ant-V /Anti-Spyware tools. Read-Only attribute would have stopped that I think.

Gonna see if I can de-Flux it . =o)

 

[ColKurtz]

I apologize. I answered without checking b/c I was pretty sure of my answer. After all, I delete directories all the time and I couldn't delete if they were read-only, right?

Well, after actually checking it appears I am wrong. All of my directories (XP home oem SP2) DO show up as read-only in Explorer, but they don't show up as read-only using the ATTRIB command (they have no attributes). Further, if I do set the folder to read-only with ATTRIB +r, I am unable to delete the directory from a prompt (RD) but I'm still able to delete it in explorer.

I've never noticed this before. Maybe someone else will pipe in with an explanation.

No luck on the modem problem?