Arrrghh!!!
This one was really horrible for a while. Sorry this is a bit long, but
the job
did take nearly 3 full days. Some people who fix systems may find it of
interest.
Symptoms:
The system was delivered (complete with peripherals and original
software). It
is quite a new system P4 running XP home. Described symptoms
were:
1. Broadband connection could not be established.
2. Canon MPC-190 scanner/printer did not work.
3. Control Panel, Windows Explorer, and other XP windows would not
fully load.
The
Connection problem was quickly solved by deleting the old and building
a new
connection. XP SP2 was already installed - so just downloaded and
installed a
few post-SP2 Windows updates & also installed the latest Avast!
anti-virus
updates - ran a full anti-virus scan (just in case) - nothing found.
The MPC-190 was not connected (via USB). Control panel appeared to be
working
fine. The printer software was reinstalled - but when it was
reconnected -
absolutely nothing was displayed when the USB cable was reconnected in
several
of the available USB ports. Nothing seemed to be amiss with USB using
Device
manager and other USB devices (like my flash drive) worked fine. Tried
another
USB printer cable and almost decided to advise the owner to take the
printer
back. But as it came from the markets - I took pity on the owner and
decided to
pursue things further.
Did
a Google search and found that the MPC-190 driver was incompatible
with SP2!
The owner did not even know that SP2 had installed automatically -
that's
broadband for you. Although there was no reference to the problem on
the Canon
web site (I certainly couldn't find one) they had apparently produced a
patch
which I was able to download from another source. Now for the
Catch-22. I
could not install the patch as the driver could not be re-installed
under SP2
as the printer needed to be plugged in during the install process, and
as soon
as it was plugged in – the process halted!
Now
things really started to fall apart. I decided to uninstall
SP2. The
patch uninstalled O.K. but the printer still could not be installed.
Also the
system was now asking for an administrator password which the owner did
not
know..... At this point I rashly decided to reinstall Windows XP 'Over
the top'
of the previous installation. This has normally been no problem in the
past.
The
reinstall went well until about 1/2 way through, then the system
re-started and
setup started again from the beginning. Serious trouble now -
no working
operating system. Very tenacious that Windows setup program. Doesn't
matter
what you try - it just wants to continue from where it left off, get
half way
through - reboot and start again.
At
that point I started to consider trying to back up data & settings.
Should
have thought about that much earlier. Tried DriveImage 2002, but
that only
does images and not files when run from the recovery floppy disk, also
it
managed to delete the Disk drive partition. As I was now working from
DOS,
downloaded and tried 'NTFS File Reader' from http://www.ntfs.com/products.htm
A
great utility that allows you to read & copy NTFS files from DOS
but it
will only write to FAT32 (or lower). No FAT32 partitions on that
system.....
Tried XP Quickboot from http://www.bootdisk.com/txtfiles/xpquick.txt
But no go. Nothing I tried would allow backups or stop the faulty
re-install.
Time
for the Big Guns. Use the XP recovery
console...... Ran a repair from
the recovery console using the great (but 7 incredibly laborious A4
pages) of
procedures from http://www.digitalwebcast.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=8658-0
BUT - you need the admin password {:-((
The previous URL pointed me to http://www.petri.co.il/forgot_administrator_password.htm
and I eventually downloaded EBCD (Emergency boot CD from http://ebcd.pcministry.com/ )
one of the
recommended solutions from the ‘forgot password’ site. You download and
create
a bootable CD which brings up a Linux system which in theory allows you
to copy
files as well as recovering passwords and much more. Although I was not
able to
work out how to copy files, I was able to null the Admin password. A
big step
forward. Thanks Linux!
Ran
a repair from the recovery console per the digitalwebcast site above -
through
the 7 pages of command line typing. Got to the end but XP would not
boot
without activation. Would not even start in Safe mode... And a network
connection could not be found.
Ran
the repair process again - but this time I stopped 1/2 way and reloaded
the NIC
driver and was finally able to backup important data. Whew!
Then
finished the repair and was able to recover using an earlier restore
point. And
was then able to activate XP (via my network router) as for some reason
the
system could not be activated via a direct connection from the NIC to
TransACT
modem.
Finally
we had an XP SP1 system back again and I was able to
install the
MPC-190 printer which worked fine using the original Canon CD - for
some reason
I was not able to install a later printer driver downloaded from Canon.
Reinstalled
SP2 and
the printer driver patch. Back to the original problem - not
only would the computer not recognise that the printer had been plugged
into
the USB port. But it also killed things such as control panel and My
Computer/Windows Explorer. So rather hard to install other software
which might
have helped. But with the printer disconnected I was finally able to
access
Windows Explorer and install the Canon Patch. Still no go {:-((
At
that point I was able to find a wonderful thread on Whirlpool at http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=228589&p=2
Five pages of accumulated wisdom on exactly this problem. One member
reported
"edit the file MPNETIPC.INI, change 127.0.0.2 in this file to
127.0.0.1,
this will fix your problems. The file should be located in
\windows\system32". Never did establish why he knew this, but it finally
fixed the problem! The MPC-190 Printer and scanner functions now
worked
well as did all the other XP services......
Conclusion:
Canon make nice hardware but I think their software can sometimes be
rather
suspect. I have had problems with two different Camera drivers. Canon's
web
site is very poor. They were well aware of the problem and had produced
a patch
- but I could not find either an admission of a problem, an explanation
or
their own patch. Windows XP SP2 was not entirely blameless. Apparently
the
127.0.0.1 is the standard 'loop back' address, and Canon were
using a somewhat
less standard 127.0.0.2 which was being blocked by the new SP2
firewall.
Apparently when the printer is used in a networking role - Canon
decided to use
an address which is normally used in 'loop back' testing.
Thank goodness for another computer to access Google and the Whirlpool
forums!
John
Saxon
5
Feb 2005
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