How do I reinstall system devices?

[Fosuco]

LOL... I feel like an idiot, but I will try to explain my situation. Here goes:

It all started today when I tried to install those new creative drivers ripped from the xp service pack which is yet to be released. After installing and rebooting, I am greeted with 16 colors of display goodness. I go to my device manager and I notice that there is a problem with my Geforce 4 4600. It says "device cannot start: code 10" so I go to rollback the creative drivers and *BOOM* BSOD. So I reboot and my display comes up fine... but my cdrom, sound card, etc doesn't. So I go into the device manager again and notice an error with a system device... it seems that the BSOD in the middle of the driver rollback somehow corrupted my "Plug and Play device enumerator". So I attempt to reinstall the driver... no luck. Rollback doesn't work either, so the next logical step in my head is to uninstall, reboot, and wait for xp to install it again. OOPS. No luck. So this is where I stand... without a Plug and Play device enumerator. Can anyone provide a bit of insight that would aid my situation? Thanks...

Fosuco

 

[Fosuco]

desperation bump...

oh, and the the device is called "Plug and play software device enumerator"

I really don't want to reformat... that would mean losing 150+ gigs of backup - (my system partition is on a raid 0 setup).

 

[DaiShan]

oof, valuable data shouldn't just be striped! Anyhow, have you tried sticking in the xp cd booting from it and doing a "repair windows install"?

 

[JustinLerner]

The Plug n Play Device Enumerator is swenum.sys

Whatever you do, don't remove or reformat any portion of any HD.
Try the following first: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q304449

There is a way to restore services and possibly drivers if you have an original file on CD-ROM or elsewhere. So for the system services for 2000/XP, it's always possible to restore the correct windows drivers or files if they were corrupted. Use the Recovery Console to expand or copy the drivers to the correct directories.

How to get into the Recovery Console:
When you re-boot from a CD you are given the option to repair an installation or setup a new installation and if you select the option to Repair the installation, the next screen presents the option to do a Repair or use the Recovery Console.

The files you probably need to restore are the following:
swenum.sys found on the CD in the drivers cab. [cd-rom drive]:\i386\DRIVERS.CAB
Additionally, in the Recovery Console, ensure PLUGPLAY is set to Auto and SWENUM is set to MANUAL.
Swenum.sys belongs in two places beside the backup directory
%systemdrive%\system32\drivers
%systemdrive%\Driver Cache\i386
The backup directory is %systemdrive%\system32\dllcache
If there are file differences between what is in the backup directory and any other system directory, Windows will copy the backup file over the other file. This appears to me how Windows works.

How to use the recovery console:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;q313670
So for the swenum.sys, you would do this if your CD-ROM drive is D:
expand d:\i386\driver.cab /f:swenum.sys %systemroot%\System32\Drivers
expand d:\i386\driver.cab /f:swenum.sys %systemroot%\Driver Cache\i386

About the recovery console and how to use the commands:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q307654

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I agree with the previous posts, never store any important data on any type of stripe (RAID 0; software or hardware).

Additionally, never store any important data on a DYNAMIC DISK in Windows 2000/XP. For protection of data, I always install the OS (system and boot drive partition) to the primary disk and if I partition the primary disk, I keep the partition as a standard BASIC DISK.