Reinstalling Printer No Longer Recognized as "New Hardware Found"

Have a Dell computer running Vista Home Premium. Printer, keyboard, and
mouse ports all are USB.

Have an HP All-in-1 that worked fine. It got installed twice, once on each
of two different USB ports. Due to long series of actions, both printers
got deleted. Now, when the printer is connected to either of these two
ports, nothing happens, ie. it is not recognized as "New Hardware Found" and
I don't get the installation wizard.

I understand having the computer recognize the printer and select the best
driver is the way to go, if possible.

How do I make it recognize the "new" printer?

You probably need the core setup files that correct this issue?

Error message when you try to install a new hardware device in Windows
Vista: "Windows encountered a problem installing the driver software for
your device"
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/937187


Most likely you can't install any PnP device which uses inbox drivers.
--
Alan Morris
Windows Printing Team
Search the Microsoft Knowledge Base here:
http://support.microsoft.com/search/?adv=1

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

"Paul DeVivo" <pdevivo@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:e$ApuOPZIHA.4332@xxxxxx

"Alan Morris [MSFT]" <alanmo@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:%23i0YYSQZIHA.5896@xxxxxx I get no error message. There's no indication at this time that anything is
corrupt.

This computer is at a friend's house, and I got only a half-hour to work on
it today. I have to return.

The problem has to do with an HP printer that was installed on two USB
ports, then deleted on both ports. There is also an Epson printer installed
on one USB port.

Here's what I did so far. I renamed INFCACHE.1 to INFCACHE.1.old. But upon
rebooting I did not get a "Found New Hardware" message when I physically
connected the HP printer, nor did I see a new INFCACHE.1 file. So I renamed
the original (only) INFCACHE.1.old file back to it's oringinal name and
rebooted.

Then I tried to manually install the HP, but not knowing which port to
assign, I guessed one. The install was normal except Vista said the drivers
were already installed. I guessed at which port to assign; it was not
correct because the printer didn't print. So I canceled the print job, but
the test page is stuck in the print queue and refuses to disappear even
though it says "Deleting". I had to leave at this point. I'll return and
work on it more later.

When I went back, I did a system restore to a point in time before the two
printers got deleted. I renamed them both to tell them apart, found the one
that worked and deleted the one that didn't work. So I'm good to go...
except I didn't learn the answer to my question on how to fully delete the
drivers for a printer that has no entry in "Programs and Features", formerly
"Add/Remove Programs".