tudsy

Distinguished
Dec 5, 2006
1
0
18,510
Hi,
I have one of the dreaded swenum.sys Plug and Play Software Enumerator failures.
I have tried all the fixes I can find posted online (including the two from the
long Annoyances.org thread on the matter) and nothing helps.


The situation is slightly strange, I get an error 31 which says that it can't load
the driver properly. However, the driver files (swenum.sys streamci.dll) are good
as I got them from a functioning XP SP2 system. Also, when I enable bootlogging
it says that it successfully loads swenum.sys. However, in Device Manager, I get
the exclamation point and error 31.

When one looks in the registry, in one of the swenum keys, there is a subkey called
Devices, which itself has subkeys which SHOULD be long hexadecimal strings identifying
which devices swenum has loaded.

In MY registry, one sees a single subkey which has about 4 hexadecimal entries and
then some junk (something like: {a7cX⌡⌡±). This key seems to be corrupt
as I cannot delete it no matter what I do (permissions, regedt32, etc.), even in
safe mode.

This prevents me from doing one of the fixes, which involves deleting all registry
keys and reinstalling. I delete everything that I can and reinstall, but that gets
me nowhere.

My guess is that either there is some device which is hanging swenum.sys everytime
it loads, or some device which messed it up at some point and now it can't recover.
I've tried yanking out everything except my video card, but that didn't help. No
problems with sound or anything when I boot to Linux, so it seems to definitely be
XP related.

Perhaps if I could force a delete of that registry key it would help, but I don't
know how to do that. (I do have Linux installed on the system if that would help.)

Maybe somebody knows what device starts with that "{a7c.." string?

Any help would be much appreciated
 

JeremyI

Distinguished
Feb 12, 2007
3
0
18,510
Hello,

I am experiencing very similar problems, except that my registry does not appear to have any keys--or any information whatsoever--regarding swenum. When doing a search for "swenum" in the registry, with keys, values, and data all checked, the only results I get are:

(Default) REG_SZ (value not set)
0 REG_SZ C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\My Documents\Regular Documents\000 Sound Problem\swenum fix folder
1 REG_SZ C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\Desktop

That's it!

Is there anything useful I can do at this point? Thanks.

Specs:
HP Pavilion 734n
AMD Athlon 2400+
1.5 Gb RAM
80 Gb hard drive
WinXP SP2
Vinyl AC'97 Codec Combo Driver (WDM)
(upgraded 12 Feb 07 from Realtek AC'97 Audio for VIA (R) Audio Controller)
 

JeremyI

Distinguished
Feb 12, 2007
3
0
18,510
At last!

Below is a link to the solution that finally worked for me when I was dealing with the "No Audio Device" issue (I had a Code 31 error "Windows cannot load the drivers" even after re-installing the Plug and Play Software Device Enumerator). It may be the one tudsy mentioned, and unfortunately I'm sorry that I cannot shed any light on deleting that bad registry key. But aside from that...

The first time I tried this procedure I was unsuccessful and I don't know where the hangup was. The second time everything worked perfectly! So, just a few things I'd recommend keeping in mind:

- Do back up the files that it says to delete, and create a restore point before beginning the registry editing steps.
- Search all components of the registry--keys, values, data--and remember to highlight "My Computer" so that the entire registry is searched. Repeatedly choose "Find Next" until no more hits come up.
- When I began the sequence of reinstalling the Enumerator, the Add Hardware Wizard automatically detected and re-installed my sound driver. I uninstalled the sound driver again (after the Enumerator was installed and before restarting), just in case.
- I don't think there is literally a string "PnP software enumerator" anywhere in the registry. Try "enumerator", although I do not think this part is necessary.

Good luck!

http://www.annoyances.org/exec/forum/winxp/1106055897?s