Plug and Play service not working

[tongachutt]

Hi all

Symptom

Device manager is empty, network connections is empty.

I found the various knowledge base articles relating to these two problems and tried ALL the suggested remedies all to no avail. I have tried the windows protected file checker procedure, it replaced a few dll's but the problem persists. I've used msconfig to verify that the service is set to start up.Something seems very wrong

In the services pane of the MMC any service I double click (apart from the plug and play service) gives me "the specified device instance handle does not correspond to a current device" In the plug and play service properties "start" and "stop" are greyed out and I'm told that the service is running even when it is disabled.

The only recent change to my PC's set up is the addition of a broadband router between it and the modem and the set up of a LAN with just one other PC (everything went smoothly and I could still see my network connections), I can still use the LAN as well as the internet - in fact every thing else seems ok.

I did have to disable the WIA service a couple of days ago as My Computer was taking an age to display the drives and this was the microsoft remedy. I dont know why this problem arose either.

Im running XP pro SP1 with all the latest crit updated on a beefy enough machine. I've been running on the original install for over a year with no major problems.....what's going on?

sorry about the length of teh post, please help I'm going off my nut.

ps my system log is also telling me I'm getting a ring buffer overrun (ouch) from the mouse anyone know what thats all about?