After fiddling about with installing and removing device drivers on a friend's computer (well, my computer didn't have a USB port and hers did, and my nifty new digital camera needed one), I was annoyed to find that the sound card had ceased working. While attempting to fix this by installing new drivers, uninstalling drivers, repeating, deleting devices, reinstalling, etc., I found this rather obnoxious message under the Device Status page:
"The NTKERN.VXD device loader(s) for this device could not load the device driver. (Code 2.)Of course, clicking "Update Driver" was full of sound and fury and signified nothing. Nothing worked. An Internet search for a solution turned up many other people facing this problem, but nobody had a solution. Even Microsoft's Product Support Knowledge Base didn't turn up a solution.
To fix this, click Update Driver to update the device driver."
Eventually I bit the bullet and called Microsoft's Paid Personal support line. A half hour later of questions and hold, the reasonably polite service tech told me that something was wrong in the registry, and that the only solution was to format the hard drive and re-install everything. Say what? Sorry, but that's the only known solution to the known problem. I paid X dollars to be told to throw everything away and start over? Sorry, but that's the only known solution. Being an absurdly polite type, I sighed and hung up.
No way was I going to totally trash a dear friend's computer in an attempt to fix what had to be a trivial (when known) problem. One does not kill a patient to cure his cold.
Two days later, I again searched the Internet for a solution, using a different search pattern. 148 page matches.
One match provided the wand: sfc
And one worked magic.
Turns out that NTKERN.VXD is not normally installed in Windows 98. Wasn't on this machine, and wasn't on a couple others I checked (thanks for looking, Dad!). Somehow, during my fiddling, apparently this critical-to-some-device-drivers file was installed, some pointers to it set, and then it was removed (probably during my subsequent uninstalls)...but the pointers remained, crippling both the sound card driver and the USB root hub driver. It's supposed to be in c:\windows\system and c:\windows\system\vmm32, but often isn't - invoking much confused dismay in the user.
Solution? Run sfc to extract NTKERN.VXD from the Windows 98 Second Edition disc into c:\windows\system and c:\windows\system\vmm32, and reboot. That's it.
Discovering the solution, I sent this note to Microsoft via Microsoft Corporate Services Feedback:
I recently contacted Microsoft's paid support line (1-800-936-5700) to solve a problem with device drivers (case number SRX001021600898) which many other people have faced. After a half hour of Q&A, the support tech informed me that the problem was known, but as a solution was not, the only fix was to format the hard drive and re-install everything from scratch - imagine my horror!We'll see if they refund my credit card in return for prescribing killing the patient when a bowl of chicken soup would do.I write you folks now to point out, in a very annoyed tone, that with a little more personal research I discovered that the solution was in fact very simple and in retrospect almost blindingly obvious: extract the file NTKERN.VXD, using the command "sfc", from the Win98 SED disc and copy it to c:\windows\system and c:\windows\system\vmm32. (Thanks to http://www.nj-web-hosting.com/win98troubles.html for the bulk of the solution.)
As the solution given by Microsoft's paid support line was to destroy and rebuild a couple gigabytes of programs and data, and the actual solution is little more than a file copy, I hereby request a complete cancellation/refund of my bill pertaining to Technical Support Case # SRX001021600898. Keep in mind that not only was the paid-for advice horribly wrong, the simple solution to the well-known problem is provided in the previous paragraph.