Unable to Install Devices: The Parameter is Incorrect

I am hoping that someone can help me get to the bottom of this oddly arising
error that is crippling my Vista laptop. I migrated to Vista last month with
a fresh install and everything was very smooth. I noticed almost zero
incompatibilities, with the exception of one ‘Unknown Device’ in my Device
Manager that I couldn’t put a finger on since all of the things I utilized
daily worked properly.

Anyways, last weekend I went to connect my Creative Zen Micro to transfer
some music files and the system correctly recognized the device and began
installing the drivers. After a few minutes of trying though, the program
crashed out and said that;

“Windows has found drivers for your device but they could not be installed�

“Could not install drivers for MTP device�

“The parameter is incorrect�.

So I was frustrated and searched around to try and find help for this issue
but it didn’t appear that anyone else experienced similar problems with their
Zen’s and Vista.

At the time though, I assumed my USB ports were all working correctly since
I had used my SanDisk flashdrive and WD external HDD with no problems
whatsoever. But I hadn’t used them since I had tried the MP3 player, and
wouldn’t you know that when I plugged in my flashdrive yesterday, it acted as
if it needed to install drivers (which it shouldn’t have) and then crashed
out on the install giving me the same message as the MP3 player;

“The parameter is incorrect�

Now, this device worked fine a week ago and gave me no trouble ever, nor did
my external HDD. So I thought maybe some of the USB drivers became corrupt so
I went into Safe Mode, removed all USB related items and restarted expecting
me system to re-detect and configure all the USB controllers. Well it
detected them, but unfortunately now I cannot install any device at all. I
keep getting that same message, “The parameter is incorrect� but
unfortunately that message gives me absolutely no other information as to
what the parameter is, or why it is giving the system grief.

There is no other information passed back to me. I am very frustrated with
this whole deal because I have not been able to track down any related items
anywhere online. I did not make any hardware or software configuration
changes that would have seemingly lead to this type of behavior. And, as I
said the two other devices were working correctly with Vista until I tried
connecting the Zen Micro MP3 player.

My machine has Vista Ultimate on it installed from a clean base, and, on two
other partitions I have the beginnings of Linux system that I am building
from source, but again, this should have no bearing on my Vista partition
since I haven’t even installed a boot manager yet for Linux. I have a feeling
that this is some type of permissions issue, but none of my permission
policies should have changed since the time when I originally used those
devices. I’m really hoping someone can offer me some help. I greatly
appreciate your time.