On Sun, 04 Mar 2007 20:52:03 -0800, Jeff Liebermann
<jeffl@comix.santa-cruz.ca.us> wrote in
<v08nu2dtbm01orut7camdh6qe9jta05527@4ax.com>:

>John Navas <spamfilter1@navasgroup.com> hath wroth:
>
>>Groan indeed! This kind of software "auto install" has proved to be a
>>nightmare for many users. The first thing I do when encountering it is
>>to completely erase it, which can be a bitch in some cases.
>
>Well, actually I kinda like it for some things. I have a Sandisk USB
>memory thing with the U3 auto install software installed. In the
>past, every time I plug one of my dozen or so memory dongles into a
>Windoze ME machine, I have to go fishing for the corresponding driver.
>However, this device had the driver in the virtual cdrom and installed
>it automagically. I was impressed with how neatly it worked. However,
>installing a USB wireless driver in the same manner strikes me as a
>far more complex and error prone process. Maybe after a few bug fixes
>and updates...

Consider yourself lucky -- I've had a number of annoying auto install
problems even with USB flash drives.

>>>Otherwise, try:
>>> Control Panel -> Add/remove Hardware
>>>and display a list of drivers. The Buffalo driver should be in there
>>>along with literally every device that was ever plugged into the
>>>computer.
>>
>>But may not be visible, even if you View Hidden drivers -- it could be a
>>Phantom driver, which can only be viewed and removed with a special
>>procedure. (I'll dig up the KB article if anyone asks.)
>
>The driver is invariably a DLL so I use:
><http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/Utilities/LoadOrder.mspx>
>to list all the DLL's that get loaded. It's amazing how much junk
>that I thought had been uninstalled shows up in the shopping list of
>DLL's.

A driver is often a .SYS file. While that's a type of DLL, you should
check to be sure that .SYS files are included in the DLL list, and of
course you still have to guess which file is which. Even then you
should go the route I described to properly and safely uninstall --
manually hacking the Registry to remove a driver is very painful and
prone to errors.

--
Best regards, FAQ for Wireless Internet: <http://Wireless.wikia.com>
John Navas FAQ for Wi-Fi: <http://wireless.wikia.com/wiki/Wi-Fi>
Wi-Fi How To: <http://wireless.wikia.com/wiki/Wi-Fi_HowTo>
Fixes to Wi-Fi Problems: <http://wireless.wikia.com/wiki/Wi-Fi_Fixes>