Device Manager won't display hardware (modem problem)...

[g|aSsJaw]

My gf's modem recently stopped working on her laptop. It's got a warranty through Best Buy and though they couldn't take it in for another week, they claimed it was probably a virus. I brought it home with me and ran AVG which detected nothing. Then I used Ad-Aware SE and Spybot S&D to remove a ton of spyware/adware crap, but none of that fixed the problem. When I go to Device Manger it just opens a blank Device Manager window.

The laptop is running Windows XP Home with SP1. When I go to Phone and Modem options in Control Panel it doesn't detect a modem either. What can I do to get this thing working again? None of the cd's that came with the laptop have modem driver software on them.

Any help/advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

[GeForceX]

Stop right there. Why are you even running SP1?

Run it up to SP2. You need to eliminate all possible variables first before even attempting to fix it. Not having SP2 is one of them. Also, spyware can modify the registry pretty badly to the point where you can't display your modem device.

-J.

 

[g|aSsJaw]

It's not my laptop, so I didn't want to upgrade to SP2....should I anyways?

 

[GeForceX]

Yes. SP2 is the standard of all Windows and most of your problems would be due to SP1.

-J.

 

[g|aSsJaw]

Thanks for the advice. I installed numerous critical windows updates along with SP2, I cleaned out all the spyware/adware, and I removed some Trojans, and now everything is working again. Device Manager displays all the hardware and Phone and Modem options detects the modem.