USB Device not Recognized

Solution:

Remove Hidden Devices

1. Click Start. Click Run. Type cmd and press OK.
2. Type “set DEVMGR_SHOW_DETAILS=1″ (without quotation marks) and press Enter.
3. Type “set DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES=1″ (without quotation marks) and Press Enter.
4. Type “start devmgmt.msc” (without quotation marks) and click press Enter.
5. Click View. Click Show hidden devices.
6. Click “+” to expand Imaging devices, Unknown devices and USB devices.
7. Are there any USB devices and unknown devices (including grayed out devices)? If so, please right click it and click Uninstall.

Initiate recognition of the USB device by using Device Manager

To initiate recognition of the USB device by using Device Manager, follow these steps:

1. Click Start, click Run, type Devmgmt.msc, and then click OK. The Device Manager window opens.
2. Click to select your computer as the location for the scan.
3. On the Action menu, click Scan for hardware changes.
   Windows XP recognizes the new device.
4. Close the Device Manager window.

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Your Problem:
If you get “Usb device not recognized” in Windows and the above solution doesn’t work for you, there might be other causes:

USB device worked before but suddenly stopped working:

I.Remove all oem*.inf files=
1. Click start and click run then under the run line type in the command “cmd” (without the quotation marks)
2. In the command line, type in the following (without the quotes) and press enter after each command:
“cd \windows\inf”
“ren infcache.1 *.old”
“ren oem*.inf *.old”
“del C:\windows\setupapi.log”

II. Removing all entries under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Enum/USB that start with VID ==
Removing the VID entries from the registry will cause them to be redetected at restart.
CAUTION: If you have a USB keyboard or mouse, do not remove the VID entry for these devices, otherwise, Windows may not restart correctly.
1. Click Start and click Run. Type regedit and click OK. The Registry Editor window will open.
2. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Enum\USB.
3. Highlight and delete all the VID_…. entries.
Permissions may be set allowing the deletion of the VID_ entries by following the steps below:
a)Right-click the key to be deleted, and then click Permissions. The VID_… Permissions window will open.
b)With Everyone highlighted in the Group or User name section, select Full Control in the Permissions section.
c)Click Apply, and then click OK.
4. Turn off the computer.

III. Reconnect the USB device to the computer system: ==
1. With the computer system turned off, reconnect the USB hub to the the USB port.
2.Restart the computer.
3.A New Hardware Detected window should open and reload the drivers.

USB device never worked before / it works but die in midway when doing something or you may get “usb device has malfunctioned”:

The following solution might be applicable:
1) Try using a shorter USB cable.
2) Try plug in the device to the back of your computer instead of the front USB port (this is because some computers don’t have enough power in the front USB ports)

3) Some USB 2.0 device are not backward compatible with USB 1.1 ports. Try plugging in with USB 1.1 and 2.0 port to see that’s the cause of the problem.

4) Try downgrade all your USB port from 2.0 down to 1.1, you can do that in your BIOS.

5) if all failed, try the USB device on a different computer. Then you can determine if the USB device or the USB port is the culprit of the problem

~ by Dominic on May 15, 2009.