After having to manually remove a bodged installation of a questionalable antimalware product called 360 Security by a chinese firm I noticed that there were specific devices that were not working correctly - after reviewing the device manager I noticed a yellow explanation mark over the hardware in question (a webcam) - and the error code:
Windows cannot start this hardware device because its configuration information (in the registry) is incomplete or damaged. (Code 19)
After a little research it looks as if this error is commonly caused by errorous filter driver entries within the registry. A filter driver allows you to extend or modify a pheriphial device. There are two types: the Upper Filter drivers work between the Operating System and the main driver and Lower Filter drivers that work between the main driver and the hardware itself.
So we must firstly use the registry editor to go to the following location:
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class
All entries under here are specific classes of devices, such as Mass Storage devices, Imaging devices and so on (like you would see categorized in the Device Manager) The names of the keys are pretty cryptic and so we need to identify which key the "Imaging Devices" comes under - you can either scroll through each key and check the "Class" attribute or see below for the specific key :)
{6BDD1FC6-810F-11D0-BEC7-08002BE2092F}
Now we should hopefully see a "UpperFilters" value as show below:
We simply now remove the 360Camera entry, although we should
leave the "ksthunk" entry as it vital and comes as part of the operating system. Now finally simply restart the operating system and all should work! (You could also remove the device completly and re-add it if you are still facing problems.)
In summary:
In this specific instance it appeared that 360 Security had been using an upper filter driver in order to provide some kind of monitoring / protection for imaging devices - including webcams. And because the driver had already been
manually removed from the system the main driver was failing to initialize properly causing the "error Code 19" message.
After a little research it looks as if this error is commonly caused by errorous filter driver entries within the registry. A filter driver allows you to extend or modify a pheriphial device. There are two types: the Upper Filter drivers work between the Operating System and the main driver and Lower Filter drivers that work between the main driver and the hardware itself.
So we must firstly use the registry editor to go to the following location:
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class
All entries under here are specific classes of devices, such as Mass Storage devices, Imaging devices and so on (like you would see categorized in the Device Manager) The names of the keys are pretty cryptic and so we need to identify which key the "Imaging Devices" comes under - you can either scroll through each key and check the "Class" attribute or see below for the specific key :)
We simply now remove the 360Camera entry, although we should leave the "ksthunk" entry as it vital and comes as part of the operating system. Now finally simply restart the operating system and all should work! (You could also remove the device completly and re-add it if you are still facing problems.)
In summary:
In this specific instance it appeared that 360 Security had been using an upper filter driver in order to provide some kind of monitoring / protection for imaging devices - including webcams. And because the driver had already been manually removed from the system the main driver was failing to initialize properly causing the "error Code 19" message.
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