Hi everyone,
I think when i was using hijack this i accidentally ticked the wrong box. I have a motorola surfboard cable modem, and in the device manager i get the message:The device is not working properly because Windows cannot load the drivers required for this device (Code 31). I have tried updating to the newest driver, which didn't work, and i also removed it from the list and rebooted, which also didnt work. Everything i have found on code 31 deals with a cd or dvd rom device, not a modem. What might have been in there that i messed up? I was wondering if anyone had any ideas on how i could fix this problem. Thanks in advance for the help!!

As caperjack suggested in your other thread:

If you do think you made a mistake with HJT, you should try to undo the accidental "fix" by restoring from one of the backups that HJT created.

HijackThis stores its backups in a sub-folder of the main HijackThis folder; the sub-folder is named (surprise) "backups". If you see files whose names begin with "backup-" within this folder, you should be able to use one of those to undo the unwanted changes:

- Run HJT, click the Config button, and then click the Backups button in the resulting window. You should then see a list of possibe backups to choose from.

- Check the box next to the backup which is dated just prior to the time you did the "accidental" HJT fix and then click the Restore button and follow the prompts from there.

If you do not have HijackThis backups for some reason and are running Winows XP or ME, you may have to try a full system restore. Let us know if the HJT backup works before you go ahead with that, though.

I restored everything in the backup section of hijackthis and i still have the same problem. I used windows system restore and when my computer restarted itself, it said that it could not be restored to that date. I tried with other dates and it still didnt work.

Your modem problem may have nothing to do with the work you were doing with HijackThis. You said that you updated the drivers, but have you totally reinstalled them from scratch?

By that I don't mean just letting Windows reinstall the existing drivers; uninstall the modem from within Device Manager, uninstall all/any modem software, reboot, and then run the modem's entire installation program again.

How do you connect to the modem anyway (USB or Ethernet)?

Yes, i did uninstall the drivers from the device manager, then reboot and then run the modems installation cd, with no luck. The modem is connected through USB. The brighthouse people sent out a tech..i have roadrunner internet, and they said that several customers were having the same problem, and didn't know what it was. Any more ideas? thanks for the help again.

Groan. If I ever find the person who decided to run network communications over a technology as flaky and finicky as USB, I'm going to strangle them with a CAT5 cable...


Given what you've tried so far, my guess is that there's information related to the modem (or USB?) somewhere in Registry which has gotten corrupted or otherwise disassociated, and is now preventing the modem from being properly enumerated. If that's the case, even totally uninstalling and reinstalling the modem and driver may not help, as that process often doesn't clean up/correct such "loose ends".

I have seen instructions on different device manufacturer's support sites which tell you what Registry entries need to be fixed to solve "Windows cannot load the drivers" errors, but those instructions are all specific to the problem device. Unfortunately, I've seen no such instructions which apply specificallly to Surfboard modems.

You might try:

1. Uninstal the modem and drivers again.

2. Open the Registry Editor and look at the sub-keys under the following Reg key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\USB

If you find any subkeys related to the modem, delete them. Make a backup of the Registry before you do so!!

3. Reboot, and reinstall the driver.