Resources are not available error when accessing control panel

If you happen to have an Intel PRO1000 network card, you may come across the following error when you open up control panel in Windows:

Intel PROset

resources are not available

The problem for me stemmed from repairing an installation of Windows.

With the Intel Pro-network cards, the software that comes bundled with them includes advanced network components that can be configured through Windows’ Control Panel. When this fails to load, you are likely to receive the above error.

Here’s what I did:

  • Download and install the network software using Proset.exe
  • Go into control panel, if the error is still present, go to Add/Remove Programs and uninstall the Intel Network software
  • Reboot the computer
  • Log back in, and reinstall the software. Include the advanced settings AND the WMI options.
  • If the network card isn’t working at this point, start the device manager and scan for hardware changes.

If all has gone well, you should now have a working card.

As a point of interest, Windows failed to automatically install the drivers for me, so I had to point to the setup installation directory.

Windows Server 2003 Print Spooler Issues

I had a problem with a newly installed server that was the print server for about 12 – 15 printers.

The printers were dotted around the site and connected to Intel print servers themselves to allow them to be available on the network.

It was reported to me that the server repeatedly stopped allowing you to print and it was true, when I checked the spooler service, it had stopped.

After examining the event log, I found the following information messages appear every 6 seconds:

Printer \\server\printer was set.

This was cycling through around 6 printers – and possibly meant a lot of network and server bandwidth was being chewed up.

All of the printers connected happened to be Brother 1230 or Brother 1430 printers. Oddly, the Brother 1240 printers were unaffected (possibly because they were series 40).

Anyway, after poking around the printer settings and the registry, I found the problem to be that the printers were using the native Brother print processor.

To remedy:

  • Open Printers and Faxes
  • Right-click on the printer and click Properties
  • Click the ‘Avanced’ tab
  • Click ‘Print Processor…
  • Select WinPrint and RAW
  • Press ‘OK’ and ‘OK’

Now go back to the settings and check that the print processor is still using WinPrint. If it is not, you also need to disable ‘Advanced Print Services’ in the ‘Advanced’ tab.