
sorry, forgot to add this...
so, I went to the device manager in my control panel, changed the view to show the hidden devices
then found the NULL driver -->options and activated it
in my case, I had to do it via the registry as the simple way didn't work out: this is done by opening the following folder in the registry
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE->SYSTEM->CurrentControlSet->Services->Null
the values of "Start" and "Type" should be "1" (Hex); click OK and restart, done!
Hope that helps if the same problem comes up with someone else...