# USB 2.0 drivers remembered, how do you clear?



## djangojazz (Apr 11, 2006)

How do you clear the drivers that are installed on your seperate USB 2.0 connections? IE: I have an external audio driver card for using cubase (my recording studio), it has all drivers installed on only one USB 2.0 physical connection insert. I also have an external harddrive that I bring from work to home and vice versa. At work at times I installed a Lan to USB 2.0 hookup to get an extrac NIC out of a laptop. But there are drivers installed to these actual physical locations and if I have an older system with say only 3 USB 2.0 hookups and I am using 1 for a mouse, 1 for a keyboard, and 1 one for a printer but the printer is a new one over an old one. 

How do I clear or make absolutely certain that that USB 2.0 location is completely empty and ready for my new drivers I install on it and doesn't have multiple drivers? Just curious, I like to keep tidy computers when I can and I saw someone do something in front of me I forgot. Is it under device manager and the USB settings or somewhere else? If it is there how do I know which USB there is related to which physical USB connection and how do I change them? Any help is much appreciated.


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## erick295 (Mar 27, 2005)

If it's something that you installed with a CD-ROM, then you should be able to remove it through Add & Remove Programs. Otherwise, if you want to update or uninstall the driver, you have to do it through the device manager while the device is plugged in. There's no reason to remove a driver that's not being used, because when the device isn't present, Windows isn't doing anything with it.


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## djangojazz (Apr 11, 2006)

erick295 said:


> If it's something that you installed with a CD-ROM, then you should be able to remove it through Add & Remove Programs. Otherwise, if you want to update or uninstall the driver, you have to do it through the device manager while the device is plugged in. There's no reason to remove a driver that's not being used, because when the device isn't present, Windows isn't doing anything with it.


Okay but if I had a NIC card via USB 2.0 installed, it crashes, I install another one from a different company with different drivers wouldn't it be better to clear the drivers from that physical location first? Or are you saying that add and remove it is safe to assume does that? Even so isn't there a way to double check? I am only asking because I have in the past removed from add/remove programs, cleaned the temp cache, cleaned disk and then installed another NIC to have problems later.

Generally speaking I have been fine but with printers and NIC's it seems to be the biggest problems and I DO NOT know much about drivers so I am not advanced enough to know if the drivers themselves were the problems or not. I am aware you may auto update drivers under device manager or ask for updates but I was just curious where the physical location to check was at.


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## erick295 (Mar 27, 2005)

Most of them are in the Windows folder. But just having the file there doesn't mean it's going to be used. Windows has a whole lot of drivers just sitting there, and if you install any they may be added there, and they may never be removed, but they will also never be used unless you want them to be. There's really no reason to delete them, but if you really want to, the driver details dialog will list the files. I wouldn't recommend removing them though. But like I said, the device needs to be connected for you to do this.


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## Rollin' Rog (Dec 9, 2000)

I really don't understand what you are asking. On Windows versions XP SP1 and later -- Windows should have already installed the drivers for your USB ports. If you are having problems connecting new devices there is a way to "clean" and reload all the related drivers. But normally you should not have to do this.

If the device you are installing requires special drivers in addition to USB drivers, you can certainly install those. But you do not normally need to do any USB driver installing.

If you connect a device and the new hardware wizard wants to know where to find drivers for it, just point it to:

%systemroot%\INF

this folder is hidden and you must have "show hidden files" enabled in Folder Options > View to see it. It contains the information necessary for Windows to load any necessary USB drivers.


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## djangojazz (Apr 11, 2006)

Rollin' Rog said:


> I really don't understand what you are asking. On Windows versions XP SP1 and later -- Windows should have already installed the drivers for your USB ports. If you are having problems connecting new devices there is a way to "clean" and reload all the related drivers. But normally you should not have to do this.
> 
> If the device you are installing requires special drivers in addition to USB drivers, you can certainly install those. But you do not normally need to do any USB driver installing.
> 
> ...


Maybe I am incorrect then, I basically have working knowledge of systems from working with them and not a degree in CIS or the equivalent. But I am studying for my C+ cert and then later for my MCSA and I know that someone that is basically in the field for 20 years told something along the lines of this: "Oh you thought you could just switch my 3com adapter NIC to another USB port, you can't do that it is has it's drivers loaded in this one particularly." Now I don't know all the specifics but I know these physical USB connections to have drivers that have their own PRIORITIZED drivers because I can see something happen with my own two eyes on my own system.

If I load my external MI4 interface and sound card (like a small mixer with a soundcard built in for converting analog to digital recording). If I physically plug the USB cable in ANY OTHER PHYSICAL USB HOLE OTHER THAN the correct one, it will not work. Printers, NIC's, and I'm sure other things are the same. What I am saying is WHY? If people are saying drivers don't matter for actual physical locations the OS circulates them internally smartly enough when they are needed for whatever USB connection you choose to put them on because they are loaded in Windows in a folder. I'm saying nu uh, not what I can see physically happening with my own two eyes is each USB connection has it's own drivers because otherwise why would an app work in one locale and not another? So how do I know where those files are to clean them or change them if they are ever needed to be deleted later? If you don't know that's fine, I don't know myself that's why I'm asking.


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## Rollin' Rog (Dec 9, 2000)

Whether there is any difference in your USB ports depends on the motherboard. And here the only difference would be between those with USB 2.0 controller support and USB 1.1. Pluging a USB 2.0 device into a USB 1.1 port will simply result in it not performing at USB 2.0 speed.

I have never seen any difference in Windows ability to detect and load appropriate drivers for USB devices depend on the physical port chosen -- with one exception and that is where there are special USB ports for the keyboard and mouse.

If you physically remove the USB plug -- to say a printer, a Joystick, a disk drive or other USB device -- you will hear a disconnect sound. If you then plug it into a different USB port -- it should be plug and play detected with a detection sound and work just as it did before.

Your USB network device may come with its own driver install -- but this is loaded separately from the "USB" port drivers -- which are strictly Windows drivers. You can see the vendor drivers in your task manager -- you cannot see Windows USB drivers in the task manager.

Windows does detect and save Vendor ID information in the registry and may continue to assign memory resources to it even after the device has long been removed. Now this can sometimes result in detection conflicts and this information CAN be removed per the "cleanup" I mentioned.

JohnWill describes it here:

http://forums.techguy.org/hardware/449735-usb-problem.html#post3435808

This also removes and reloads the "Windows" drivers for these devices. It does not load or ask for any "vendor" drivers.


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## erick295 (Mar 27, 2005)

I've seen Windows find "new" hardware when I plug a device into a different port, but it always finds the driver right away...


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## djangojazz (Apr 11, 2006)

Hmmm maybe it's specifically products made by Steinberg(German manufacturer that makes cubase as well as MI4 box) and 3com then. I can literally unplug my USB 2.0 cable for the position that is the default for the box, that is not part of my MOBO but in the front panel. Place that exact same cord just one half inch up in the next available slot and when I am in cubase it will not record but in windows it will play sounds through my stereo. It will say something like "The drivers that you are looking for are not detected on this location." Or something like that. It will make the dee duh disconnect sound then the bleep connect sound, recognize it in windows, but not on a completely usable level. Meaning I may run sound out to windows so possibly windows has a generic sound driver it uses but in cubase it will not monitor direct recording. IE: you want low latency when recording with a high sampling rate so generally you use an external box to convert analog to digital sounds. People argue over the internal to external to death but simply put consumer cards that are Creative Diamond max super duper greatest sampling rate on the planet with 3.5 inch bay to load external connections still don't work as good as external boxes made my Steinberg, Digidesign, or others because these machines are made for the purpose of sound recording. 

I use this as an example because the MI4 box I have also powers itself through the cable, has it's own heads up monitor tray, has it's own frequency settings (IE: 44.1 sampling rate is cd standard, I can go up to 88.2 on my box, bitrate up to 32 point floating, and choose to see CPU output for latency and monitor how my PC is taking me cramming say 10 tracks at once all eq'd, effects going on, MIDI tracks, and other things all monitored in near real time)
That's a lot of info but that helps to explain to people, no not all devices you just plug in will work right away and can be freely swapped to different ports. Why does this matter? Real world situation, what if one of my friend's comes over to borrow my PC for recording and I just did some work on it so cables are detached. They don't know where I put something so they put it somewhere else. Instead of trying to find which correct port to use they simly put the disk back in and load the drivers to another port. I come back and I used that port for a dedicated NIC that knows that port especially for it and now runs slower because it has more stuff there. That is why I was asking how do you delete the individual USB port locations. I assume it would be much easier to clean these then simply uninstall my NIC and MI4 box simply to rededicate their positions.

What I am getting at is that not everything with a USB is simply plug and play and self powered NIC and external cards sometimes seem to HAVE TO be put in the correct location. If it's my external acomodata harddrive yeah, I can put that it USB 1 through 8 positions on my PC and mix match them to death and have no problems because it's plug and play and Windows autodetects it. Devices that have their own cd's and are not plug and play seem to have the problems. Well I'll keep asking around and see if anyone knows the cause and or effect of this. Some one tried to mention that it could be due to two soundcards but generally when I am running my recording I go into device manager and disable my internal sound card and then get windows and cubase recording sounds all through my stereo system from the SPIF's out on the external card. Weird, maybe it's a harder issue than I had thought. I'll have to remember to ask the guy next time I see him if no one here or elsewhere seems to have an answer.


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