How long have you had this problem now....how many is a few days? You might try
doing a registry restore to the date just prior to this problem, if it is really
only a few days.

Restart in DOS mode, then at the command prompt, type:
scanreg /restore
and press Enter.
Choose the backup .cab file dated the day before the problem started, and press
Enter, then follow the prompts.

If that does not help or you don't have a backup dated before that day, read on.

It appears you are having the same type of problem this person had:
http://www.whosthatguy.com/devman.jpg

In some cases, the icons in Device Manager change into grey diamonds as appears in
the picture in that link, also. Do you see that or are the DM icons normal? Just
curious, as I think that would indicate Registry corruption in the ENUM key.

Try this first: Start again in Safe Mode, and expand the "Hard disk controllers"
category this time. Under it you will see something like "Primary IDE Controller",
Secondary IDE Controller", and "PCI IDE Controller". Select and remove the PCI IDE
Controller (or whatever particular name it is given...Intel ### PCI IDE Controller,
or "Via Busmaster PCI IDE Controller....you get the idea). Is that successful, or
do you get the same error?

If that succeeds, while still in Safe Mode Device Manager, try to remove the CDROM
items again....if it fails just skip it, click OK and restart in normal mode, so
that the IDE controllers can be redetected. Does that fix anything? If not, go
back into Safe Mode and try to delete the CDROM devices again, now that the previous
removal of the IDE controller was successful.

..If on the other hand, you also get the same error when trying to remove the IDE
Controller in Safe Mode...."Device categories cannot be removed"....then try this,
but be prepared to reinstall all your device drivers (video card, modem, network
card, sound card):
Click StartRun, type scanregw |Click OK|
When prompted, backup the registry.
Restart in Safe Mode, open the Registry Editor (StartRunregedit), expand
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, select the ENUM sub-key, and press the Delete key, then OK the
confirmation message.

Restart in normal mode and let Windows start detecting the hardware....when it finds
the primary IDE controller and wants to reboot, say no and let it find the secondary
IDE controller too, then reboot at that prompt. Next restart will find the rest of
the hardware.

If all this does not fix it and you want to revert back, reboot to DOS and restore
the registry copy that was made when you used scanregw to back it up....it will be
dated with that date.
--
Glen Ventura, MS MVP Shell/User, A+
http://dts-l.org/goodpost.htm


"Patti-M via WindowsKB.com" u20148@uwe wrote in message news:5de9629f3a4f5@uwe...
Thanks. I already tried that. It won't let me. Same error message.

Bill Blanton wrote:
Try right-clicking on the device and select "Remove" from the context menu
that appears.

Thanks for trying to help. I expanded the CDROM category, and I tried to
remove both the CD-R and CD-RW drives in SAFE mode, but I get the same
[quoted text clipped - 27 lines]

I am using Windows 98.

--
Message posted via http://www.windowskb.com