Installation of USB devices fails in Windows XP

I was setting up an XP dell desktop today and noticed that the USB keyboard and mouse were not working. Even after I installed the drivers and updated the OS to service pack three nothing would work. I was getting the same message: new device found, but no matter what route I took (pointing to the drivers or letting the OS find them) it would end up being unable to install the drivers.

I found this solution on the internet after many searches so I am posting it here:

First you need another computer with windows xp.

Copy the contents of the folder c:\windows\inf\ to the faulty computer. This folder is hidden so you need to change the folder options to allow the system to show hidden files.

To copy the inf directory you can create a cd or dvd with the content of this folder.

Start the faulty computer in safe mode. Remember that to do this you need to press F8 as you are booting the computer and select the option to start in safe mode.

Copy folder inf from the CD or from the good xp machine over the network to the faulty one.

Restart the computer.

This worked like a charm for me.

After upgrading to Internet Explorer 8 you get the error: An unhandled win32 exception occurred in iexplore [4992]

I recently updated my Internet Explorer to Internet Explorer 8. Once I completed the upgrade it complained the some of my programs installed didn't work well with IE8. One of these, was Skype.
The solution to this problem was to update to the latest version of Skype. However when I completed the update of Skype I always got the same error while openning IE:

An unhandled win32 exception occurred in iexplorer [4992]

If you are getting the same error try uninstalling the web features of Skype.

Go to Control Panel
Then go to Programs and features
Find Skype we features and uninstall it.

This should make your problem go away.