Filip Norrgård’s blog @ filips.net
Filip’s blog about mobile technology, tech itself and other stuff

Vista Goes Bad: Dial-Up or Denial-Up Networking?
6 March 2008 in Phones & Updates and Fixes | Comments (1)

Sigh, some issues in Vista can have strange consequences. About a week and a half ago, I couldn’t my mobile broadband anymore since Vista’s own dial-up networking feature went bonkers. The problem appeared right in the dialing sequence, after showing “Dialing *99#”, the DUN showed “Verifying user name and password”. Right then, wham!: “Vista couldn’t connect to…” error message popped up. That was strange, since the phone’s own Internet applications were able to connect to the net and download mail, websites and podcasts without any hitch.

Shuffle the Cards and Drivers, Please

So, I was thinking the problem was caused by a corrupt driver for my Nokia 6120 Classic. I reinstalled, deleted, reinstalled, rebooted, tried some voodoo, rebooted, and every possible scenario that I tried failed miserably. Testing dialing up using another Vista (64-bit, same edition, SP1 patched) computer everything worked just fine! Testing with a Nokia E90 (Communicator) failed on my own Acer Ferrari, but worked on the other Vista computer.

“What on earth?”, I thought to myself. Trying to connect via “Manage Network Connections” in Vista showed me the problem: Error 31 — A device attached to the system is not functioning. Quite funny, as in reality the drivers were working, the system wasn’t.

The Operating System Attached to the System is not Functioning

Solution: Repair install… sorry, it’s called upgrade install in Vista. I used the excellent guide from Vistax64.com for my endeavors, and it worked this time around. You should know that you might want to check that you’ve got 15 gigabytes of free space and a recent backup copy of all of your files before you try to repair install Vista using the upgrade path. Supposedly, if you have installed SP1 and have a pre-SP1 disc, then you can’t use the disc to do do an upgrade reinstall but you have to uninstall SP1 to be able to use it. However, I happened to have a SP1 disc handy, and the upgrade install worked without a hitch using it.

Other than waiting for the upgrade reinstall to complete (took over two hours for me), the system as a whole seemed to function much, much better. Maybe something had gone and broken it self, or Vista was just feeling down from me testing those SP1 release candidates.

No More Corrupt INFCACHE
9 December 2007 in Root & Updates and Fixes | Comments (0)

I have previously had problems with Vista and especially getting new (and old) hardware to find their own drivers. The problem was previously caused by a corrupt INFCACHE and was only recently fixed by Microsoft in an fix related to knowledge base article 040199:

“When you try to install a new hardware device on a Windows Vista-based computer, Windows Vista cannot install the driver for the hardware device successfully. Additionally, you may sometimes receive the following error message:
Windows encountered a problem installing the driver software for your device. Windows found driver software for your device but encountered an error while attempting to install it.
Device_Name
This problem occurs if the Infcache.1 file that is in the %Windir%\System32 folder is deleted or corrupted.”

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940199

I haven’t gotten the update via Windows Update just yet, but only via Problem Reports and Solutions feature in Vista. You can,however, download the update yourself for 32-bit Vista or 64-bit Vista. In conclusion, I think it is safe to say that it seems like someone at Microsoft has been reading those 80-something problem reports that I’ve been sending in relation to the corrupt INFCACHE problem. Which is a good thing, of course.