Device Manager blank

martinjensen0191 · 2012-08-09T15:54:05.000Z

Windows 7 - Device manager does not show any devices. How can i get my devices displayed again? plug & play service is set to automatic. I have tried the RegEdit as suggested by Microsoft and the permissions were okay.

jimbob-squarepants · 2012-08-09T15:58:02.000Z

The device manager doesn’t have any entries? Never heard of such a thing.

smartkid808 · 2012-08-09T16:01:42.000Z

I have had this issue with customers machines before… they where infected… i just wiped the machine and all was good.

markd2705 · 2012-08-09T16:02:57.000Z

I have… when one is infected with a Virus or one of those scam apps like “Antivirus 2010”

Do a system restore to an earlier time if possible, Not saying this is the cause but it is possible.

OTHER: Create a new administrator account and see what shows from there OR run in safe mode (although the Virus I saw totally screwed a clients PC. it made everything on the PC hidden and even a system restore didn’t really help as it didn’t restore all the file/fodler attributes?

terraashley2902 · 2012-08-09T16:04:04.000Z

SmartKid808 wrote:

I have had this issue with customers machines before… they where infected… i just wiped the machine and all was good.

Same. The only time I’ve seen this happen was from malware.

smartkid808 · 2012-08-09T16:04:29.000Z

Just curious, what version of Windows 7 is this? Is this home or pro?

lendeamer7575 · 2012-08-09T16:05:19.000Z

I have to agree with Jimbob, that is highly unusual.

Is that the only problem? Or are there other things going on as well?

Possibly a problem with MMC, I suppose. Can you open up MMC manually, then select the Device Manager snap-in? Any errors? Still blank?

Also, can’t rule out malware at this point. They do seem to like hiding things these days. Speaking on hiding things, can you go to “view” and select “show hidden devices?” Anything show up?

pbp · 2012-08-09T16:15:55.000Z

Would forcibly power off the machine, pull the drive, and have it scanned from a known good machine (virus/malware/combofix/etc). The occurrence is troubling.

If the drive comes backs clean, reinstall, boot with “last known good”, use “system restore” to go back (a week?), and see if issue is resolved.

Expect the process to take a couple hours.

curtisnewman · 2012-08-09T16:36:40.000Z

Hammer, Magnet, Nails, Blender

erikeckert9842 · 2012-08-09T19:17:58.000Z

MSD wrote:

I have… when one is infected with a Virus or one of those scam apps like “Antivirus 2010”

Do a system restore to an earlier time if possible, Not saying this is the cause but it is possible.

OTHER: Create a new administrator account and see what shows from there OR run in safe mode (although the Virus I saw totally screwed a clients PC. it made everything on the PC hidden and even a system restore didn’t really help as it didn’t restore all the file/fodler attributes?

Not related to the OP (sorry) - Unhide.exe (from bleeping computer). http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/topic405109.html

as for blank Dev manager…Yeah…I got nothing. Toss a new admin account into the mix, otherwise start with the reformat.

brycekatz · 2012-08-10T04:50:46.000Z

I would run Combofix first, just to see what it finds, but yeah - this system has been infected with something nasty. Even if Combofix finds and removes it, the integrity of the system will be questionable. Wipe and reload/reimage is ultimately your best, most reliable option.

aaronfenwick · 2012-08-10T05:55:59.000Z

Rebuild. We had that here on two machines, I spent ages trying to clean it, but ended being quicker to rebuild.

Its the only true way of getting rid of such an infective virus.

I know thats probably not the answer you were hoping for, but that seems to be the concensus here.

martinjensen0191 · 2012-08-10T14:16:40.000Z

Ultimate. Thanks, it looks like the consensus is that the only relief is to rebuild. Darn!

pbp · 2012-08-10T16:51:26.000Z

Not so bad. Get to test your backup plan, mull over installing linux, exercise a few disaster recovery points … all the fun I.T. stuffs!

dfuru · 2012-08-13T07:27:15.000Z

I have seen something like this in the past on XP machines. We had installed a new AV and during the push it caused jscript32 to become unregistered. One of the ways I would check if the machine had the issue was to either open services.msc or device manager to see if they were blank. The fix is simple, log in with an account with admin rights and open a command prompt. Type regsvr32 jscript.dll . If it works saves you a couple of hours, if not then you only wasted a couple of minutes.

aerowsphere · 2013-07-18T15:36:07.000Z

Linux - always virus and malware free. Virtualization on top of that with daily snapshots. My ideal way of dealing with an issue like this that hasn’t materialized yet due to lack of funding. One can always dream.

I’m actually dealing with this on a POS machine (Point of Sales) at the moment. As you can imagine, I’m glad I checked Spiceworks first before beginning the destined to fail cleaning process. Rebuild. Noted.