Each you connect time external devices like scanners, printers, and the likes to a Windows 10 computer, the device either pushes the drivers through the USB or any other port, or you are expected to install the drivers through external media. In both cases, the driver will be loaded into the system, allowing you to use the device. However, it doesn’t always go smoothly as you could encounter some errors like the “Windows cannot load the Device Driver for this hardware because a previous instance of the Device Driver is still in memory ( Code 38 )”.
If you encounter such an error in the Device Manager, then this means that a previous version of the device driver is still in memory and that each time the device is used, that previous version is loaded into memory and then unloaded which triggers the “Windows cannot load the Device Driver for this hardware because a previous instance of the Device Driver is still in memory (Code 38)” error. This kind of error occurs if the operating system loads the unwanted driver or if it fails to unload the driver.
It could be that there is an obsolete version of the driver that’s still installed in the system or it could also be that you need to update your USB drivers as they could be outdated or the problem could also be due to some third party program that is interfering with the installation. Whatever the cause is, here are some suggestions you can check out to resolve the problem.
The first thing you can do is to uninstall the drivers that are currently installed on your computer and then reinstall their latest working versions from their official sites. This kind of error is commonly encountered while loading drivers for scanners and printers. This is due to the fact that their drivers and software come along with a package which is usually in external media like CD or DVD. So when you install the software package, there’s a possibility that a newer version has been launched by its manufacturer. When that happens, you have to uninstall the previously installed driver package and then download the drivers from the manufacturer’s website and install them.
Since it could be a driver issue, you can try to update or reinstall the Universal Serial Bus Controller drivers using the Device Manager. Refer to the following steps:
Note: If it is a regular USB drive, then it will be listed as a USB Mass Storage Device but if you have a USB 3.0 device, then look for a USB 3.0 Extensible Host Controller.
Note: If updating the USB Controller drivers didn’t work, you can try to reinstall them instead.
If the first three given options didn’t work and you still see the error when you connect external devices, you can try putting your computer in a Clean Boot State and then try connecting them again.
While running your Windows 7/Windows Server 2008 R2, your system suddenly stops responding out of complete randomness and you see an error message popping up which says something like this:
0x00000050 (parameter1, parameter2, parameter3, parameter4)
The stop error 0x00000050 signifies that there’s a PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA problem. If you’ve seen this error on different occasions then you will find the parameters in the message to be varying. That is because they are dependent on your PC’s configuration. Not all Stop errors "0x00000050” occur due to a single issue.
However, the most common problem which is encountered which results in the stop error popping up is due to a pool corruption occurring in the Srvnet.sys file.
This issue might be caused because of software incompatibility or a defective physical memory which resulted in requests for data for a hardware driver or service which was not found in the memory.
If you find the error occurring after you’ve installed a new application or a device driver then you should access Safe Mode and uninstall, disable or remove that application or driver.
For this you have to follow the below-mentioned steps: