No items are showed in device manager
Very often registry permissions in Windows get messed up. Almost all of the time this makes different programs not to work at all. I will cover the situation when there are no items shown in the Device Manager e.g. Device Manager is empty. If you try to restart the computer, run spyware scan and even rescan the devices directly from device manager no items will be shown in the device manager. After some testing I've found that this is registry permissions related issue. You must use the Registry Editor in Windows 2000/XP (as I have not seen this problem posted for any other operating system). Just to be sure there won't be any bad consequences make backup of the registry from File->Export->Select All and save the file (if something goes wrong you can restore the registry from this file). You must be logged on as a local administrator to perform this task:
1. Go to "Start", "Run", and enter "regedit" 2. Maximize the "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE" window. 3. Scroll down to "SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum" 4. With "Enum" selected right click on it and choose "Permissions" option.
Note: At this point you will probably notice there are no permissions on this key.
5. Click "Add". 6. Add the group "Everyone" and the user "SYSTEM". 7. Select "Everyone" and check "Read" ONLY! 8. Select "SYSTEM" and check "Full Control". 9. Click the "Advanced" button at the bottom of the window. 10. On the Advanced window check "Reset permissions on all child objects..." 11. Click "OK" 12. On the warning window click "Yes" 13. Close Registry Editor 14. Make sure that Plug and Play is running (Start->Run->services.msc)
You should now be able to see everything in Device Manager, Network Places Properties and Printers.
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