Your computer hardware might encounter different kinds of issues. You only discover the issues when you want to use it. But, at first, you just see that the device is not working normally. But, you don’t know why the hardware can’t work.
In a situation like this, you can go to the Device Manager to check the status of the device and then you can see what happens to the device. If there is something wrong with the hardware, you will see an error message with an error code.
Here are some common error messages you may receive:
This device cannot start. (Code 10)
This device is disabled. (Code 22)
Windows cannot initialize the device driver for this hardware. (Code 37)
Windows has stopped this device because it has reported problems. (Code 43)
And more….
We have talked about the above error codes except error code 22. If you are bothered by code 37, code 43, or code 10, you can access the above pages to get the solutions. While, if you are facing error code 22, this article is helpful.
Device Manager error codes often happen in your Windows PC, and the common error is code 43, code 10, etc. In our previous posts, we have discussed them in detail.
Additionally, you may encounter another error – code 37. This will be talked about in this post. When getting the issue, the error message is “Windows cannot initialize the device driver for this hardware.”
What does code 37 mean? This indicates the driver installed for the hardware device has failed in some way. The error applies to any hardware device in Device Manager but it mostly occurs in video cards, USB devices, or CD/DVD drives on Windows 10/8/7.
When you connect an external drive like an external hard drive, USB stick, memory card, SD card, etc. to your computer, the device will push the driver via the USB port or you can choose to manually install the device driver through an external medium.
After the device driver is successfully installed and loaded, the connection between your PC and the external drive is established, and you can use the device normally.
However, sometimes, you may find that you can’t use the external drive as normal without receiving any error message. In a situation like this, you can go to Device Manager to check the status of the device and find out what the problem is.
If everything is OK, the message in the Device status section is This device is working properly.
However, if there is a problem, you can find an error code in the Device status section in the Windows Device Manager.
Take the following Device Manager code 38 as an example. You can see that the Device status shows you the information on this error:
Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware because a previous instance of the device driver is still in memory. (Code 38)
The driver could not be loaded because a previous version of the driver is still in memory.
Top Reasons for Error Code 38 Windows 10
To help you better understand this Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware code 38 error, we summarize some main causes as follows:
The hard disk is turned off when the computer is idle.
The USB drive is in trouble.
The USB controller driver is not installed correctly.
The USB controller driver is corrupted.
The USB controller driver is outdated.
The USB controller driver has interfered with some third-party programs & services.
And more….
When you connect an external USB hard drive to the computer, it cannot work properly. In device manager, you cannot find the USB hard drive, only a USB mass storage with a yellow exclamation. It means your computer does not recognize the USB mass storage device.
After right-click the USB mass storage and choose Properties, you will see a code 10 error in the general tab. The Code 10 error is: This device cannot restart. And maybe it is no more explaining words, sometimes there are some explaining words such as the requested operation was unsuccessful.
