Maybe a new bug with driver installs?  

Hey all,

I think that I have quite possibly uncovered a new bug with windows 7 (insert random update here).

I am prepping a couple of pc's for use in a live environment and among the things that I do, disabling automatic update is one of them as well as disabling windows defender and windows firewall.

I do not need any of these features and really more often then not they introduce problems into our shows. So, I have never had any problems after performing these actions until now. For some reason Windows 7 will not install ANY drivers automatically anymore. This is really bad for me as this will more than likely be the last time I see these machines and having the client manually install EVERY driver for every mouse is unacceptable.

When I go and re-enable Windows firewall, windows defender and windows update, the problem still persists. I renable automatic driver installation as well and the problem does not go away. Has anyone else experienced this???

Thanks!

Maguscreed said:

Look over this here.
Drivers - Turn Off Automatic Driver Installation

It's the opposite of what you are looking for, but assuring they haven't been manually disabled is the first step here. If they have been just use that tutorial to turn it back on following the steps and using a little commonsense.

See, I went through all of this and checked it to ensure that it was in-fact enabled, and even though it is I still get driver install issues with everything. This is very puzzling.

Maguscreed said:

And this is on multiple machines?
Curious I'll see if I can reproduce it here on my secondary system.

Yes actually it is on 7 different machines. 4 were configured a month ago by me and some finagling and playing with settings got it back to an acceptable state, but these three, no matter what I do will not install drivers. Funny thing is, even drivers that are installed for specific usb ports (lets say a thumb drive) will show up with an error, but actually function. This is incredibly bizarre.

It is almost as if there is some registry key that gets changed when I disable windows update that is missed when windows update is re-enabled...

Furthermore, these last three machines I did even LESS with to show prep. Really all I did on these was disable firewall, windows update, windows defender and enabled telnet....

I have always shyed away from using registry cleaners but right now I am willing to do anything to try, you have any good suggestions for a free one?

So, I have tried the registry cleaner and could not find any smoking gun. I am completely lost as to what the cause of this issue could be. By the way, I appreciate all of your help.