Fresh XP Install - No PnP support?

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mtlewis117

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May 11, 2014
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As of late, I've noticed that when doing XP reloads for customers we're having some USB driver issues. No matter what, when you connect your USB devices the found new hardware dialog pops up however since the drivers aren't installing, you can't use the mouse to tell it to install. It's a pretty vicious cycle, and it's caused a lot of issues here in the shop.

We've looked into registry tweaks, nothing seems to work. Maybe it's something simple that we are overlooking.
 
If you have a known good XP installation CD, and a computer from the time XP was "cool," nothing is going to magically make PnP stop working.

First thing to check is your XP media. It should of course be an XP SP3 slipstreamed media, which is known good and tested.
 
Check the bios on the system and make sure the option for Plug and Play aware OS is set to yes. If not change to yes and try again.
 
mtlewis117 said:
As of late, I've noticed that when doing XP reloads for customers we're having some USB driver issues. No matter what, when you connect your USB devices the found new hardware dialog pops up however since the drivers aren't installing, you can't use the mouse to tell it to install. It's a pretty vicious cycle, and it's caused a lot of issues here in the shop.

We've looked into registry tweaks, nothing seems to work. Maybe it's something simple that we are overlooking.
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Plug in the ps/2 mouse.
 
B00nie, that's a solid idea and that's something we usually do when we can. However, most PC's that come in now aren't outfitted with PS/2 ports any longer.

Bios settings are checked and pnp is enabled when available, but not all machines have that option in the BIOS.

We have used the same image file for several years, and this just became an issue within the last few months. We recently re-burned this image to several new disks and all result in the same issue.

We will try and secure a new image, as we have some untouched XP SP3 discs from Dell.

Thanks for all the help so far guys!
 
Wait...you said first post you were 'doing XP reloads for customers'
(this makes me think your reinstalling XP on a machine that had XP and was being used but broken and needs a reinstall)

Then you said "However, most PC's that come in now aren't outfitted with PS/2 port"
Are you putting XP onto new hardware? the machines probably have USB3 ports, which XP wont have drivers for?
 
PS/2 has been dead for a while, and probably about half of the XP machines that come in don't have PS/2 connectivity.
 
mtlewis117 said:
PS/2 has been dead for a while, and probably about half of the XP machines that come in don't have PS/2 connectivity.
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Thats true only on laptops. Desktops have had 'no legacy' designs for just a handful of years. All my current desktops still have ps/2. But I agree, installing XP on current hardware is digging blood from your nose.
 
The best service you could probably do for customers having you reinstall XP is to have "the talk" with them about a new computer.
 
While I do agree to an extent about replacing XP, some of our customers are small business owners who have software that requires XP.
 
Have you tried installing Win 7 Ultimate, or Enterprise and running XP as a VM. I believe no license is required for XP to do that and a single XP VM license is covered. If it works it may not be a half bad solution.

I tried this and it ran pretty damn good in the past.
 
Does dell even supply drivers for xp machines anymore? They certainly do not sell new equipment with xp on it, no reason for them to make drivers for it.
 
Lord_Exodia said:
Have you tried installing Win 7 Ultimate, or Enterprise and running XP as a VM. I believe no license is required for XP to do that and a single XP VM license is covered. If it works it may not be a half bad solution.

I tried this and it ran pretty damn good in the past.
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This. Win7 includes XP Mode.
 
Ultima99 said:
This. Win7 includes XP Mode.
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I'm also thinking that the generic win XP Virtual drivers included in XP mode may work where the ones bundled in the OEM or retail OS may not. This may fix the issue and I think it's worth a college try on at least one machine at the OP's location.
 
THe virtual drivers wont work at all on the physical hardware when XP is installed physically
 
dbwillis said:
THe virtual drivers wont work at all on the physical hardware when XP is installed physically
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Um.. If I remember correctly. XP mode in Windows 7 Ultimate and Win 7 Enterprise is different than physically installing windows XP. No windows XP license, media, or license key is used. It has generic virtual drivers, which I'm not saying Will definitely work but I think they might and it's worth a shot. It's been some time since I tried it but that's how I remember it unless I'm mistaken.
 
Don't forget XP Mode is also available if you are running Win 7 Pro, not just Ultimate/Enterprise.
 
oh, thought you meant copying out the driver CAB file for the xp mode, then installing XP and trying to install the drivers from that CAB.
VM machines use a sort of bridge mode, they don't connect directly to the hardware, so I didn't think that the drivers would have any improvement, no?
 
It's time to sit down with your customers and lay down the facts. XP is not a reasonable OS for a business user anymore. As others said Win7 + XP mode is the route they should take if they have XP dependent software.
 
Fun fact, XP never had PNP USB support when it shipped. I use a copy on my C2D machine for gaming and had to slipstream the USB drivers for the motherboard as well as a few service packs and other updates to be able to use the mouse and keyboard as soon as it booted up. I can't for the life of me remember where I found the guide and the right downloads to do it but with a little creative google searching you should be able to find it, it was a common problem.

It is definitely still better for some tasks than Win7, I have a few old games that simply do not run right in compatibility mode. One game has scripting that gets all out of whack with Win7 (doesn't even work on 8.1 no matter what I do) and it seems like a totally different game because half the features don't work in the newer OS.
 
LigTasm said:
Fun fact, XP never had PNP USB support when it shipped. I use a copy on my C2D machine for gaming and had to slipstream the USB drivers for the motherboard as well as a few service packs and other updates to be able to use the mouse and keyboard as soon as it booted up. I can't for the life of me remember where I found the guide and the right downloads to do it but with a little creative google searching you should be able to find it, it was a common problem.

It is definitely still better for some tasks than Win7, I have a few old games that simply do not run right in compatibility mode. One game has scripting that gets all out of whack with Win7 (doesn't even work on 8.1 no matter what I do) and it seems like a totally different game because half the features don't work in the newer OS.
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Tried running the game on linux/wine?
 
B00nie said:
Tried running the game on linux/wine?
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I have actually tried that running a VM with XP, but it wasn't that great. Notably I couldn't get the sound working on some of them and OpenGL graphics along with Bink videos seemed to be an issue as well. Probably someone better with Linux than I am could figure it out but I just don't have the patience for it.

For example, one of the games I like is the old Starfleet Command series. Under Win7 in compatibility mode the single player missions don't work correctly or sometimes even show up. Something to do with the scripting not liking 64-bit OS, it might work better under 32-bit Win7 but I have the working XP machine so its fine.
 
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