Vista - Weird Driver-related issue

I have been using Vista for about a month now and I like it a lot. I have a weird issue that just showed up on Thursday however. Whenever I turn it on, it asks me for the drivers for a number of peripheral devices. My mouse, keyboard, and a number of "unknown devices". Pretty much anything plugged in via USB or anything that normally doesn't need a driver to function. My external hard drive is also another one that comes up as well.

All these devices seem to function properly, when I tell it to remind me later, however when I say "do not ask me again" that device ceases to function.

I don't know what else to put so if you have any ideas or need any more info please let me know!

go into control panel
select device manager
click continue
have you got any exclamation marks againts any devices. (you probably will have)
Try to post a screen shot.
It sound as if one device is failing or at least a driver for usb.

To fix this try a restore point to before it started to happen or reinstall the mobo drivers from disk.

There's the screen shot of my device manager.

By the way I don't have a floppy drive on my computer.

OK, although you do not have a floppy drive physically connected to your system, your computer's BIOS is programmed to show a floppy drive - so that is why Windows is trying to load a driver for a device that does not exist.

The other one that is a problem is the eHome Infrared Transceiver - unplug that (the remote control receiver) and reboot and see if your problems magically disappear - that unit might be going bad / shorting out.

Okay I disabled floppy support on my motherboard and unplugged the ehome transceiver.

I got an error for my DVD-Burner (which is another thing it has been telling me about I forgot about that). Bear in mind it works flawlessly.
I got an error for "Microsoft Wireless Desktop Receiver 3.1A" (my mouse and keyboard... these two work perfectly as well. Even the media buttons)
I also got one for my external hard drive (connected via USB. I tried it via eSATA but there's an issue with my motherboard wanting to boot from it)
It then goes back to the "Microsoft Wireless Desktop Receiver 3.1A"
Then does it again with "Microsoft Wireless Desktop Receiver 3.1A"
Then it complains about "Generic External USB Device"
Then "Unknown Device"

Seems about like normal but less "Unknown Devices"

More information is need - *what* error?

To be honest, it sounds like something is failing somewhere.

Look in Windows Update and see if there were any updates installed on that day - if so, uninstall them ***ONE BY ONE* and see if the errors go away (by one by one, I mean uninstall 1 and reboot and see if it goes away, and then reboot again a second time to verify if it has disappeared or not).

This could very well be a Patch Tuesday issue....

Sorry. It is just the Vista "New Hardware Detected" window where it also asks you to either supply drivers, ignore once, or ignore forever. Whenever I select ignore forever, that device stops working immediately. I had to get a new keyboard when that happened because I could no longer use it, or log in when I restarted the computer to see if it would work when I did that.

There were two updates I installed on the 2nd (Wednesday) with the title "Microsoft - Other Hardware - HID Non-User Input Data Filter". I'll try to uninstall both of those one at a time and see if that fixes it.

-EDIT-

Actually I think I was wrong... for some reason now that I go back to it the date is different now, showing the 5th rather than the 2nd, and it will not let me uninstall that update, as it does not show up in the "Installed Updates" portion of Programs and Features. Only stuff installed before 6/30/08 is showing up there, and I have not had this problem that long ago.

HID filter? hmmm - and most of the devices you're running into problems with are HID devices as well....

That update needs to go.

There have been reports of users who have that HID Filter update installed all of a sudden having issues with USB Hub Controllers and all USB devices. It seems that this patch that was made to fix a specific Screensaver playback issue when you have certain MS wireless mouse and keyboards, also causes issues with installed USB devices.
One post I read where the user used System Restore to go back 1 day before the Update installed fixed his problem. It seems there is no Uninstall for this update, so that may be the way to go.

That was a good tip I hoped it'd fix it and thought it would, but unfortunately it did not