Winnipeg Photographer


How to fix Device Manager is blank

I came across this issue today. This one was really frustrating! According to Microsoft the only thing that would cause this issue is if the Plug-And-Play service was not running. I would first go and check that as that is an easy fix.

The computer I was looking at today wasn’t so lucky. It turned out that it was much harder to fix. How I fixed it was:

  1. Hit “Windows key” + “R”. This will open the run window
  2. Type “regedit”
  3. Go to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum
  4. Right Click “Enum” and “change permissions”.
  5. Make sure System has full control, everyone has read.
  6. In my case this was already done. I went to the advanced section told it to replicate those permission to all sub-folders and files.
  7. After doing so all my devices started showing up in device manager. Device manager was no long blank.

 

Hope this helps.


Leave a Reply