Why does Vista have trouble finding drivers?

I recently purchased a Canon digital camera and SD memory card (for digital camera). Relevant information:

When inserting the SD card in the SD reader on a HP laptop with Vista OS or plugging in the camera to the USB bus the laptop could NOT find a driver for either even though the camera software was installed as specified. I spent a couple of hours trying to fix this, going through the typical “Search computer and internet for driver software” when trying to automatically locate a driver.

I gave up for a while and decided to use/install the SD card and Camera on my desktop Windows XP computer. No problem, the devices and drivers were installed immediately and all was up and running within 2 minutes. When looking at what drivers were installed I found they were located in the c:\windows\system32\driver directory (just typical windows drivers, nothing product specific).

I went back to the installation on my Vista laptop and went to the two devices not working in device manager (Camera, SD memory). Instead of ‘Searching computer, internet, etc” for drivers I told it to look specifically in the c:\windows\system32\driver driectory. Bingo, drivers found, installed and all working perfectly.

Now to my question (sorry for long post):
Why couldn’t the Vista OS find the drivers as XP did (automatically or even after I told it to search my entire computer as the driver update said it would). Obviously it did not search my entire computer as the drivers were there in the Windows\system32 directory. I am just trying to understand for future reference as instances like this really bug me.

 

Its your hp laptop that has the issue. Try reinstalling its media card driver.

Also, you do not need the software that comes with the cameras, it is all crap.

 

I don’t believe the laptop has an issue unless it is with Vista. Even before I installed the camera software, I plugged the Camera into the laptop. Vista recognized that a device was plugged into the USB port but indicated that it could not find a driver after an extensive search (XP took 5-10 seconds to recognize the device as a camera and the correct one).

In Vista's device manager in a directory such as “Other Devices” there was an unknown device with an exclamation point (This was my camera). An automated search for a driver turned up nothing, but when pointed to C:\Windows\system32\drivers, driver files were installed which included “WpdMtpDr.dll, WpdUsb.sys, etc” from Microsoft Corp. A new Directory in Device Manager was made called “Portable Devices” and a sub directory was created “Canon PowerShot A590IS”. I was surprised that Vista could not find this information as XP did without me pointing it to the windows driver directory.

As to the SD Memory Card. The laptop does have the correct drivers for the media card reader installed but the Kingston SD 2GB memory card showed up, when inserted, as a non-functioning device (in the Portable Devices directory in device manager) and indicated that a driver could not be found. Again after pointing manually to the C:\Windows\system32\drivers directory it installed a driver “WUDFRd.sys” for this device and the SD Card was now identified as “Microsoft WPD FileSystem Volume Driver”.

Interestingly XP installed the camera under Imaging Devices, I thought that is where it should be installed in Vista but Vista likes Portable Devices better I guess.

Well, all is working as it should, but I would still like to know why the device was not originally recognized by Vista and all the hassles.

 

What camera is it? I have a Canon Powershot S80, and when I plug it into Vista x64 it prompts me normally to extract the photos or view it like a flash disk. I did not have to install any software to get this functionality.

 

That is the way I would have expected it to work, but sigh! Well it works now but I still don't understand.

Canon PowerShot A590IS

 

I don't know what the specific answer to your problem is, but I did find a rather long thread from lockergnome.com that seems to suggest a possible solution. The thread is here: http://help.lockergnome.com/vista/Vista-Playing-Dumb-find-Driver-ftopict40500.html

And the solution that person found was to look for, and delete, a file called "INFCATCHE.1" in the C:\Windows\inf" folder. That, and the thread, might be a place to start looking for a solution.