I don’t
know about you, but these steps seem fairly easy to me. Of course,
you can always call the technical support hotline, but who wants to
do that if you can fix it yourself?! So, let's get started. If an
old plug and play device still works, it's likely that your computer
has mistaken the new device for the old one (a more formal term is
device driver conflict).
To fix that, you
need to uninstall the old device driver and any other drivers that
could possibly cause conflict with your new MP3 player. For that,
you need your device manager. Now, configuring the device manager
requires Administrator rights, so if you don’t have those enabled,
this will not work. When you're ready, continue on!
1.) Click on the
Start menu and choose Run.
2.) Type in “cmd”
(without the quotes) and click OK. A new window will
then show up, which is the good ol’ DOS command prompt window.
It looks like this:
3.) Next, type
in “set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1”
(without the quotes) and press the Enter key on your
keyboard.
Note:
Nothing will really happen, but you will see the command prompt again.
That’s okay!
4.) Now, type
in “devmgmt.msc” (without the quotes)
and press the Enter key. Nothing will happen in the
command prompt window, but the device manager window will appear.
Click the X button to close the command prompt window.
5.) Next, click
on View and choose Show Hidden Devices.
This will display previously installed devices that are not connected
to your computer, otherwise known as “ghost” devices.
Now, I want you
to pause, smile and congratulate yourself, because we are about to
get a little more serious!
Caution:
Be careful with this next section. You should note that non-loaded
devices, drivers and services are "grayed" out, but that
doesn't necessarily mean you should delete all of them. Only remove
the items you know you don't need. Also, be careful that you don't
change too many devices or you might need to reactivate your Windows
installation. If you don't feel comfortable doing this, please find
some help!
When you're ready,
click on the plus (+) signs to expand the device list. Staying with
our example, we can safely uninstall the old MP3 device driver and
the other ghost USB devices since we don’t need them.
We can also safely
uninstall the ghost unknown devices listed under the Universal
Serial Bus Controllers section, because they are not connected
and their drivers have not been loaded properly.
When you’re
done, just click on the X button to close the device
manager. Then restart your computer and voila! Your computer should
now recognize your new MP3 device. In the event that it still doesn't,
there are many other factors to consider, which I may just cover in
future articles. Until then, you can refer to your user manual for
some additional help. I hope this tip has helped a lot of you get
your new devices up and running. Have fun!
~ Cory Buford
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