Troubleshooting: Installing a legacy device

Problem – You have a legacy device such as older PCMCIA serial interface card for which there is a Windows Vista driver but no Windows 7 driver, and you want to install the device on a Windows 7 computer.  When you plug the card into your machine and try to install it, you get the message “A service installation section in this INF is invalid”.  What should you do?

Possible solution – This might be caused by the fact that the Mf.sys driver is not installed on Windows Vista or later.  Mf.sys, the multifunction bus driver, handles PnP enumeration of the device functions and then arbitrates resources like I/O ports and IRQs between the functions.  To see if this is the problem or not, follow the procedure outline in this KB article:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/926171

More Info – See

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/ff542778(v=vs.85).aspx

Mitch Tulloch is a seven-time recipient of the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award and widely recognized expert on Windows administration, deployment and virtualization. For more tips by Mitch you can follow him on Twitter or friend him on Facebook.

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