Re: XP SP3 seems to be causing conflict installing usb printer
 

I have experienced the same problem with installing printers after
XP/SP3 upgrade and judging by a Google search on the subject this is a
common problem.

There are a myriad of examples on forums where people are having the
same problem with printer installation and for a wide range of printer
types and models and which they relate to an SP3 upgrade.

I have yet to solve this problem after many weeks of trying different
solutions suggested on various forums.

If anybody has an insight into the cause, I (and I would suggest, many
others) would appreciate your help.

The hardware installation problem seems to effect only printers. I must
emphasise, that all USB devices cameras, scanners, drives etc all work
fine on my system. It is only printers of any model or make which will
not configure properly.

Following is a very shortened summary of the symptoms and things that I
have tried:

My Canon S520 which has been working for many years, stopped working
immediately after Windows Update installed SP3.

Symptom: Print jobs appeared momentarily in the print monitor queue
appeared to send, but failed to print.

I attempted deinstalling and reinstalling and updating drivers etc. to
no avail and assumed that the printer was faulty. I bought a new Brother
HL-2140 printer, it also would not install.

I then tried a Dell 725 - same problem.

I Tried all three printers on a friends new laptop with a fresh XP/SP3
installation. All three printers failed to install properly.

I then tried all three printers on another desktop with XP/SP2
installed

ALL THREE PRINTERS INSTALLED AND OPERATED NORMALLY.

These tests proved well enough to me that the upgrade to SP3 was the
root cause.

Here are the actions and resultant messages I received when attempting
an install:

I plug in the printer to the USB port and the "Found new hardware"popup
shows that the printer and model is recognised.

eg. for the Dell Color Printer 725

The "Found New Hardware Wizard" popup intervenes with the messages:

"Cannot install this hardware"

"There was a problem installing this Hardware"

"Dell Color Printer 725"

"The specified port is unknown"

"Click finish to close the wizard."

Then the popup - "A problem occurred during hardware installation.
Your new hardware may not work properly".

I asked both Brother and Dell support for help but received no
replies.
Canon did reply but could only suggest a problem with SP3.

Because of the "Specified port is unknown message" I tried deleting my
USB ports and letting them reconfigure on bootup. This did not solve
the problem.

Microsoft's did respond with some advice and I did the following:

STEP 1:[/b] DELETED THE CURRENT PRINTER DRIVERS:

*STEP 2:* REMOVE ALL RELATED PRINTER SOFTWARE FROM \"CONTROL PANEL\"->
\"ADD/REMOVE PROGRAMS\".
*
STEP 3:* CLEANED UP DRIVER INFORMATION FROM THE REGISTRY (FOLLOWING
DETAILED INSTRUCTIONS FROM MICROSOFT.)

*STEP 4:* IN SAFE MODE DELETED FILES FROM THE A
\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\SPOOL\DRIVERS\W32X86\3,

*STEP 5: *REINSTALLED THE APPROPRIATE PRINTER DRIVER.


*STEP 6:* PLUGGED IN THE USB PRINTER.


*THIS DID NOT FIX THE PROBLEM.

Microsoft then suggested that I do a system restore to a restore to a
point when printer was working (on SP2).

I could not do this as I had no suitable restore points.

[Microsoft at this stage prematurely closed the support job and stopped
responding to my requests for more help.]

Impressive!!!

With no obvious solution at hand I thought I would deinstall SP3 and
try installing the printers after the rollback to SP2.

I then discovered the [b]svcpack.log* showing the autoupdate record
for my PC dating back a number of months cooinciding with the start of
my printing woes.
The log showed numerous errors and five consecutive failed attempts by
the autoupdate process to install SP3.

The sixth attempt appeared to have worked but errors in the log
suggested that this installation too, was flawed and was a likely reason
why my printer to stopped working and further, making it impossible to
install any printer.

During the uninstall of SP3, I received a number of device installer
errors which further suggest that the last SP2 to SP3 upgrade attempt
was still flawed or incomplete.

Once SP3 was "uninstalled" the printers* still did not configure with
SP2. *

I then attempted a fresh reinstall of SP3.

Three attempts at reinstalling SP3 failed and were rolled back by the
Microsoft installer. Despite this, "system info" showed that the
version installed was SP3
eg:

-<Value><![CDATA[5.1.2600 Service Pack 3 Build 2600]]></Value>-


After much searching for help from the the Internet, I found that there
was a registry write permission problem which did not allow even an
administrator write permission on certain keys and this was interferring
with the SP3 install.

I downloaded the *SubInACL.exe* package from Microsoft and reset the
registry key permissions as follows using reset.cmd:

subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE /grant=administrators=f
subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_CURRENT_USER /grant=administrators=f
subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT /grant=administrators=f
subinacl /subdirectories %SystemDrive% /grant=administrators=f

subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE /grant=system=f
subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_CURRENT_USER /grant=system=f
subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT /grant=system=f
subinacl /subdirectories %SystemDrive% /grant=system=f

Once I had fixed the permission issue, SP3 appeared to install
correctly for the first time.

The record from the svcpack.log gave no errors, however the printers
will still not install.

This is where I am at currently.


Thank you in advance if you can help.

Amgine


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