Setup Fails to Disable Driver If Not Currently Installed

• Microsoft Windows NT operating system, version 3.1
• Microsoft Windows NT Advanced Server, version 3.1

SYMPTOMS

When you start your computer, the system tries to load an incompatible video driver unnecessarily, then creates an event log entry saying that the driver didn't load.

CAUSE

If you use maintenance mode Setup to try to install a video driver that doesn't work on your system, the driver won't load and Setup loads VGA instead. If you later use Setup to choose a different video driver, Setup first locates and disables non-VGA drivers, but it misses the miniport for the previously attempted driver because the driver was never loaded. When you start the system later, it tries to load the incompatible driver because its miniport is still enabled. It fails to load the driver and returns an event log entry reporting this situation.

WORKAROUND

If you can identify which miniport isn't loading, you can load REGEDT32 and disable the driver manually by setting the Start value under the miniport services entry to 4. The error above is not fatal, nor does it cause any message to be displayed (no error message is displayed because Setup marks the video services entry ErrorType as ErrorIgnore). You can ignore the Error log entries it causes and use EVENTVIEWER to clear the log file if it gets too full.