I'm having problems installing some drivers and I have tracked the problem down to the pnputil.exe on Windows 8

If I run up the command prompt (in administrator mode) and type: pnputil -e

I get the following response (always):

Microsoft PnP Utility

Enumeration of driver packages failed :The request is not supported.
No published driver packages were found on the system.

 

This message seems to manifest itself in the actual install dialogs for hardware I'm trying to install but I'm not sure what has gone wrong.

My system is clearly broken in some way, as when I perform the same action on other Windows 8 PCs, I get the expected driver list displayed...

Has anyone got any advice or clues as to what I should do next?

Is it clean installed or upgrade installation?

In Device Manager, is there any driver with issue?

Run Windows Update and install all updates and check Action Center in control panel.

Its a clean installation (6 months old now, but no problems until now)

No driver issues in Device Manager

No Actions in the Action Center

Windows update has also recently started failing the following updates (not sure if its related...):

• Update for Windows 8 for x64-based Systems (KB2845533)
• Update for Windows 8 for x64-based Systems (KB2836988)
• Brother - Printers - Brother HL-4150CDN series

OK, so in case the windows updates were related, I downloaded them manually and installed them manually...

They both seemed to install successfully, but when I rebooted the updates failed to install and still appear in the updates list...

Is this significant to my pnputil\driver problem?

Please run Windows Update troubleshooting in Control Panel.

I have run the Windows Update Troubleshooter - it seems to do various fixing but I still have the pnputil problem and the following Windows Updates fail to install (even after July's patch Tuesday):

Brother - Printers - Brother HL-4150CDN series
Update for Windows 8 for x64-based Systems (KB2836988)
Update for Windows 8 for x64-based Systems (KB2845533)
Update for Windows 8 for x64-based Systems (KB2855336)

Not sure how this question is marked as answered, when I've still got the problem :/