Imagine the scene. I got bored earlier this morning, after another shitty day at work, and begin to clear my C drive up. It’s a bit of a mess, and I like to keep it as clean as possible. Therefore, when I noticed that my system restore data was taking up over 3Gb (wow, count ‘em!), I thought I’d get rid of these by turning off system restore, and back on again.

I smiled to myself, and thought that it would be rather funny to have technical problems after this…

Time passes. A couple of hours to be precise. I slap a DVD in my drive, hoping to retrieve some ancient data from its purple surface. I click on Start, then Run, and type E:

Nothing. Not a sausage.

Had the drive letters become screwed up again? This occasionally happens when I’m pricking about with USB drives, like I’ve been doing recently. I go into the Computer Management section, to see if the drive had a letter assigned to it. Ummmm, no drive. This was looking odd.

Sigh. I headed into Device manager, and there it was. The big yellow exclamation mark, with the happy little message…

“Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver may be corrupted or missing. (Code 39)”

I felt repulsed. How could this happen? Why me? WHY ME OF ALL PEOPLE? I walked away from my computer, clutching my forehead, and shedding a slight tear as I tried to ignore the torment that was cutting me up inside.

Eventually, I dragged myself back to the computer chair, a shadow of the man I once was. I tried uninstalling the device, and reinstalling. Still nothing. The big, yellow exclamation mark stood out like a spare dick in a porno. What was I to do? The answer, as you’ve probably guessed, is to turn to the big, multicoloured tech support centre known as Google. Within minutes, I had a solution, but it took a bit of translating. Hopefully, if you ever come across the same issue, then the following should help you. It certainly helped me! (copyright some advert circa 1991)

Ooooh-kay. Here goes.

Click on Start > Run, type regedit
If you don’t know how to use regedit, get an adult to help you. If you’re a pussy winnet that thinks altering the registry in any way, shape and form, will cause planes to fall out of the sky, then feel free to back it up.
Browse to the following key…
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
In there, look for 2 keys on the right called “UpperFilters” and “LowerFilters”. Delete both of those. Fuck knows that they do.
Go into the Device manager, and right-click your ailing drive, and select the option for “Uninstall”. It’ll then disappear from your list. Click on “Action” and select “Scan for Hardware Changes”. Within seconds, your drive will be redetected, good as new. Hopefully.

Your mileage may vary. It worked for me. And, if it doesn’t, then I really couldn’t care less. Please don’t leave comments asking for my other suggestions. I don’t really have any, except for reformatting your machine. Look, I’ve had a shit day at work. I can’t believe I put this much effort in diagnosing my own problems.

Oh, one thing that has cheered me up immensely, is that I have once again become addicted to Google Streetview, despite the concerns about “privacy”… er, do we actually have such a thing as privacy anymore anyway?

Either way, whilst the multi-camera’d Google har has yet to reach the rural location of Mercuryvapour Towers, it has, in great detail, captured Paris city centre, including the exact hotel in which I stayed at…