I recently encountered a problem where a Dell Inspiron 6400 displayed three base system devices after installing Windows XP onto the machine. It originally had Vista installed, so I only had Vista drivers, which didn’t work with Window XP.
About a year ago, someone I know purchased an Inspiron 6400 laptop from Dell and tried to get XP installed on it instead of Vista. They had no luck and ended up with Vista. Recently, they have decided to remove Vista and install XP on that same laptop, and asked me to do it. No problem, at least until I ended up with three devices that weren’t recognized by XP.
If you have an Inspiron 6400 and have noticed three base system devices in the device manager, then I will explain how to correct that issue in this post.