I Still Don't Sleep At Night

THE Eplpdx02 STORY

There go the rest of my few readers. Au revoir. Come back again now, ya'll, hear? But I feel I need to do something, because people are still searching google and MSN for the eplpdx02, and when they come across this weblog as a result, they are so desperate that they come looking. I owe them something. My first post about it was June 17th. (I just got this search engine today and, frankly, I just don't know about it.) I was complaining then that all Dell tech support ever wants to do is another system restore. Is that all they know how to do? And the message on those little error/event cards that tells you to go to that Microsoft site--what a joke. You get there and they're like "Oh, we didn't know you would really need help. We don't have anything prepared to help you with errors. Better luck next time sucker." And here you are frantically skimming crazy weblogs to solve your driver problems.

I'm just a novice myself, but I'll be happy to share what I've learned so far. Unfortunately, I would guess that this only applies to Windows. I have XP. Anyhow, my eplpdx02 is giving me a lot less trouble. I taught it who was boss, that's what. I was getting a message to look in the event viewer every time I started the computer. And sure enough, every time I started the computer, the event would read that the eplpdx02 could not be started. Today I looked in the event viewer and could only find one instance on the entire event log. (Trick I learned recently: In event viewer don't bother scrolling down to find how many instances, just go to View and then Find and fill out the information and all those events will come up. Or maybe you already knew that.)

I assume you went to the device manager first. (Start-right click Computer-right click Properties-click Hardware tab-click Device Manager). Then click on View and click on "show hidden devices." Then look for "non-plug and play drivers." In that long list that pops out is the old eplpdx02. Right click it and you should have a menu to click on for scanning for hardware changes. If not there's one above. Right click on it and right click on its properties. This will tell you if it is working properly or not. My computer said it was, but every day I was getting error messages. My best guess is that this driver is somehow connected to my Epson Stylus C-82 printer, except it's not a printer driver. As I said in my last post on this, I read some place that you could uninstall it or disable it, and when the great computer wizard sensed it was gone, she would appear and help you put in a new one. I couldn't rollback the driver because this is the one and only and there was no option to rollback.

Well, first I followed the troubleshooting guide in the device manager, but I didn't have any luck. No Microsoft driver updates for that driver. No info on compatibility. The manufacturer, MK Systems Co., Ltd., comes up in every search I did as Trans Data Systems Co, Ltd. I also checked out one of the sites that promises thousands of drivers. I chickened out of pursuing either. I couldn't find it on my drivers CD but I decided if I uninstalled it the CD would find it and install it.

Here's why I decided to uninstall it: It looks different from its little buddies. It's the only one with this in front of it: \??\C. That can't be good. I saw this when I took a good look at all my equipment by going inside to the Components node. You can really see that little bugger there. Go Start--All Programs--Accessories--System Tools-System Information-Components-Software Environment-System Drivers-and there she is: Eplpdx02. It's type is a "kernel driver," whatever that means. It's state was "running." It's status was "Okay." It's error control was "normal." Started? "Yes." Start Mode? "System." But those \??\cWindows really got to me and I went and uninstalled it.

And you know what? Nothing, absolutely nothing happened. The computer ignored me. We went through the restart routine, and I did it again and still nothing. I must have uninstalled it about four times. It stayed there like a bird on a wire in a storm. But you know what? It knows I'm not playing. Like I said it's through acting up, and that's what counts. I believe in voodoo computer repair I guess. I don't know if it was the repeated uninstalling or the series of diagnostic tests I performed on my computer as long as I was over there at system information, but something changed for the better is all I know.

And I know what the damn thing is now, and where it is, and how to get to it if I need to, so it wasn't a complete waste of time. And that's the end of my eplpdx02 story. And I didn't do another lousy system restore. I have new errors to worry about. Where am I going to restore to I always wonder?