USB and Hardware issues
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Removing hardware by just pulling it off the USB plug is the worst way of handling your PC, always use the Safety Remove Hardware tool. Refresh your USB drivers as follows:
First you need access to all hidden files inside your PC. Please right click Computer > Properties > Advanced System Settings at the left side > in the Advance tab select Environment Variables > in System Variables click New and enter: "devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices" without the parenthesis and enter 1 for the Value. Click the Ok and Exit. The above instruction is for Windows Vista, but is similar for XP, and is intended to be used only on single non network PC (never in a network).
Please open the Device Manager and the Universal Serial Bus Controller and look at the USB icons and you will notice that all have a solid black color. Click View at top and select Show Hidden Devices (has to be selected on every test because it does not stay fix by default). Take again a close look at the USB icons and you will see that some are transparent. These USB transparent icons are the leftover drivers that Windows assigns to the hardware that you remove, in some cases month or years ago. Uninstall only all transparent USB icons. Next time you plug any device, Windows again will provide the required driver to the specific USB, or the one that is in the hardware program you previously installed.
To have a better understanding of the conflict that is caused by removing the hardware from the USB, by only pulling the plug and not using the Safety Remove Hardware tool, please do the following:
With any available hardware, plug it on all the empty USB ports you have on the PC, letting Windows install the driver and then simply unplug to remove. Try to install a different hardware in the same USB ports and in some of them Windows will not detect the device; this is because the USB is empty but is still in use with the previous driver. Plug the first same device and now right click it and select Safely Remove and unplug. No transparent icon is shown.
Sometimes even using the Safely Remove feature, the Windows driver is left assigned to the USB port, maybe expecting to have the same hardware plugged again. This is why is important to check and uninstall the transparent USB icons. If you have not done the maintenance, don't blame any of the Windows OS for the USB conflicts when installing your hardware devices. After you finish, check for other transparent hidden devices in the Device Manager and see how many belong to things that you no longer use. How many months or years have passed since you used and removed some of the devices shown? Do the maintenance and you will have perfectly working USB ports.
Efrain Morales 02-01-2009