"Fingerprint reader not detected." Help!

[_Rms2000_]

I had this problem too, but I fixed it, partly due to some help from this thread and a lot of experimenting. I'm using one of the HP Envy series laptops which came preinstalled with windows 8.1.

I'm posting because although some of the information I found here was useful, some of it didn't help at all, so I'm going to try to explain in as much detail as I can remember what I did to fix it.

One of the first things I did after getting the "device not connected" message was to reboot. Then I opened the Device Manager (My Computer > Properties > Device Manager OR My Computer > Properties > Hardware > Device Manager), and look for something amiss. What I see now includes "Biometric devices > Validity Sensors (WBF) (PID=0050)", but when I first got there it said "Other devices > Unknown device". Needless to say, SimplePass had been working and was still running, but now gave the "device not connected" message. This was the initial state of my computer.

In a few of the posts above, it is recommended that you uninstall SimplePass and run one of HP's funky service packages, which supposedly contains the drivers you need and a system patch (actually just a registry key) that allows the system to correctly identify the fingerprint reader. This did not work for me, though I did have to uninstall SimplePass. In fact, when I went to Add or Remove Programs and told it to remove SimplePass, it said something like "Unable to remove: program not found. Would you like to remove it from the programs and features list?". Before I got i working, I had to manually delete the program's files ("C:\Proram Files\Hewlett-Packard\SimplePass\"). 

Once I'd done that, I was able to restore both the correct driver and the SimplePass application by using the "Reinstall Drivers and/or Applications tool in the HP Recovery Manager program, which I found in the program list on the start screen. I selected everything that looked like it might have to do with the fingerprint reader, which included "Validity Fingerprint Sensor Driver", "HP SimplePass", "Ronaldo 1.x - Validity Fingerprint Driver" and "Validity VFS301 Fingerprint Reader Driver".

Once those had reinstalled successfully, I verified that "OPBHOBroker.exe", "OPBHOBrokerDesktop.exe" and "ClientCore.exe"(with the start command /hideui) were all in my startup programs (I verified this using Pirifrom's CCleaner application, running in Free mode. I recomend it if you know what you're doing and like a responsive PC). Finally, I restarted my computer.

I don't recall whether SimplePass started up right off the bat or if I had to start it manually before it would let me re-enroll and get everything back to normal, but if you need to restart it, just go to the SimplePass folder ("C:\Proram Files\Hewlett-Packard\SimplePass\") and run "ClientCore.exe". If that fails, run everything else that ends in ".exe" first, then run it again. That's probably not the most efficient way to do it, but it seemed to work.

I hope that my report has helped at least a few of you, and perhaps that the information provided will help those that work for HP or whoever more effective at resolving this kind of issue in the future. I wish you all the best of luck with your endeavors and, since it is presently the apropriate season, I wish you all happy holidays.

A word of advice: if your device isn't working as you'd like it to, know this: as with all computers (provided that they contain exclusively functioning hardware and are adaquately powered), your device is, and will always be, doing exactly what it's been told, nothing more; nothing less. Since it isn't doing what you'd like, it could perhaps be worth investigating what it's been told to do, either by you, by someone else, or by someone else on your behalf.