drivers - Proving that a USB Device is "Dead"
2014-04
Ben S
I recently purchased a used USB receiver online. Upon plugging the receiver into my PC, I found it strange that Windows did not attempt to locate drivers for the new device. I checked the device manager, and nothing new appears in there. I tried installing the official drivers from the manufacturer, and still nothing is recognized. Tried different USB ports and an entirely different machine to no avail. It appears the hardware is just not functioning whatsoever.
My problem, however, is that the party that sold me the device refuses to believe that the issue is hardware related and insists I have some sort of driver issue. Is there any way that I can concretely "prove" to this person that the hardware is broken via a screenshot, picture, video, or otherwise?
Bigbio2002
When you plug the device in to the PC, show them a screenshot of the Device Manager. If the device was detected, but with no drivers, it would appear under a category called "Other devices", have a generic name, and have a yellow question mark for its icon.
You can try pressing the Scan for Hardware Changes button to see if any new devices pop up. It may also be worth updating your chipset drivers.
Another solution would be to call back and speak with another technician who will be more helpful.
Kondybas
Connect it to the all available USB-ports on different devices. If no responce then device is dead.
askvictor
I'm find an issue on some machines I administer where, upon plugging in a USB device, Windows takes forever 'searching preconfigured driver folders' for the device driver. This includes USB disks, which I would imaging should be quite fast. I have configured the machines not to use Windows Update to look for the drivers, which sped things up on some machines, but it still seems to be taking way too long to recognise a simple USB device. Once installed, re-plugging the same device into the same USB port is very fast, but plugging it into a different port on the same machine gets the same issue. The C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore directory weighs in at almost 1 GB - not too much bigger than a clean install on that machine type (830 MB) (a clean windows install on this hardware installs devices super-fast).
Any ideas/pointers?
Cheers,
Victor