Windows detects new hardware (printer) EVERY time it boots! (1 Viewer)

[Charles J P]

OK, what I have here is a Win98 SE computer with a HP DeskJet 812C printer. It is my wifes PC. Everything worked fine, but then I upgraded my computer. So, I took my motherboard, processor, RAM, NIC, video card, etc. out of my old PC and put it into hers. Now, no matter what I do, it says that it needs to install her printer every time her computer reboots. I'm about ready to pull my hair out. Any ideas? I really dont want to have to do a fresh install on her PC.

 

[Jeremy Anderson]

When you change motherboards, a lot of unnecessary drivers can get left from the old mobo that can cause problems (i.e. conflicts due to changing chipsets). Ideally, you want to go into safe mode and remove ALL drivers from the system config. Reboot and let it redetect everything from the ground up, and hopefully that'll straighten it out. I've had to do this when moving hard drives to a new machine.

 

[Charles J P]

Thats what I did, but I ran into some problems during the first reboot. I should try that again.

 

[Charles J P]

Got if fixed. It was actually a BIOS setting. How frustrating.

 

[Wayne Bundrick]

For our future reference, which BIOS setting was it?

 

[Charles J P]

It was actually a combination that caused IRQ conflicts. My bios is old enough that for non-windows systems (older versions of Linux, OS2, etc) there was a setting for "Plug-and-play OS" If set to yes, it would let the OS control IRQs if not the BIOS would. Then there was also a setting that said "IRQ handling" and the choices were auto or manual, and this was set to manual. I changed the OS plug and play to yes and IRQ to auto, and that took care of it.