Vista’s Weak Link: The Driver Store

There’s a weak link lurking under the covers of Windows Vista. It’s the collection of “.inf” and related hardware “setup” files collectively referred to as the Windows Device Driver Store.

Basically, the Driver Store helps Windows to map specific hardware devices – for example a USB mouse or printer – to the appropriate device driver package. As such, it acts as the script from which the entire Plug & Play dance is choreographed. That is, until an unscrupulous driver developer tweaks one or more of the key index files (INFCACHE.1, for example) the wrong way. Once that happens, the entire production can come to a screeching halt, something I found out the hard way this week when the Driver Store on my own developer workstation became corrupted.

It started out innocently enough. I was attempting to manually install the driver for a legacy printer (HP LaserJet 5/5M PS) using the Printers folder. I clicked the Add Printer button and followed the wizard prompts – that is, until I reached the part where you select the make and model of the printer. First, I noticed an unfamiliar error message in the bottom left corner of the dialog. The text was all in red and was warning me that the driver I was selecting was “unsigned.” Undaunted, I clicked on only to be prompted with a new dialog requesting path information to the device driver files.

I knew right away I was in trouble. Windows has shipped with a broad selection of OEM printer drivers for as long as I can remember. And I knew for a fact that the LaserJet 5 driver was among those installed by default – I’d used it on every version since Windows NT 4.0, and I’d never been prompted for a file location (it was included in the base OS image and thus automatically available to the installation wizard).

After an hour or so of playing “find the driver” with Windows I resigned myself to having to reinstall the OS, which for me meant 2-3 days of tweaking, tuning and application installing just to get back to a reasonably functional level. I then recalled a dissimilar, yet possibly related, issue with some buggy bluetooth drivers I had been playing with weeks before. Back then one of the driver installers had somehow corrupted the Driver Store, forcing me to seek out an archaic fix involving the Vista repair console and deleting several files from the C:Windowsinf folder. Here’s the link to the original article.

Of course, the above technique – which I had successfully employed to cure my bluetooth woes – didn’t fix the printer driver problem. The Driver Store was regenerated, but not enough to restore printing support. In the end I resorted to nuking the entire C:Windowsinf folder and replacing it with a pristine copy from another system. A reboot later and I’m back to a functional state again.

Needless to say, this entire scenario was just harrowing enough to prompt an inquiry to Microsoft. Their response: Corruption of the Driver Store by 3rd party installers is a known issue and one they plan to address by reviving a mechanism from Windows XP that automatically regenerates the indices if/when they’re corrupted. Apparently, this particular bit of code was “prematurely retired” with Vista, a decision I think Microsoft is now regretting. In the meantime, if you run into this issue you can try the techniques described above and pray Microsoft delivers the promised hotfix sooner rather than later.