Windows XP hidden drivers!

Tau · Post by **Tau** » Thu Jul 20, 2006 4:07 pm

Hello everyone,

I was having a bit of trouble installing a friend's Edirol MIDI keyboard on my PC - it installed the driver, but it didn't show up on the application MIDI port list. After several reboots and uninstalations, I found this document on Edirol's website.

Apparentely, Windows XP keeps a record of all drivers ever installed, even after an uninstalation. Also, XP can't cope with more than 10 MIDI USB ports, so if you happened to have previously installed different USB MIDI drivers, they will never be uninstalled, and possibly your new MIDI hardware can't find a way to the 10 USB MIDI ports allowed! This document will teach you how to find those hidden drivers, and permanentely remove them.

This doesn't concern only MIDI - I found three Creamware Scope driver entries for each card (probably due to failed instalations), and also some old hardware. I followed the instructions, removed all excess of drivers, and now everything is in order.

Please forgive me if this is old news, but I have encountered this problem many times (now that almost every MIDI thingie is USB), and this is the first time that i found information that makes sense and works... Just thought of sharing with you:

"The problem is probably caused by a 10 USB driver limitation in Windows XP/2000.

Click on "Start" and choose "Run," then type in "cmd" as the command line. Click "OK" and a DOS prompt will open. Type the following commands one line at a time, hitting enter after each:

set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1
start devmgmt.msc

The Device Manager will now open up, so click on the View menu and choose "Show Hidden Devices."

Look through the device manager carefully and note that there are a lot of drivers with a kind of translucent colored icon next to them. These are what are called "ghosting" or otherwise nonpresent drivers your computer is remembering in case you were to ever use the device again later. They can also be drivers that do system functions and are hidden by default, or partially installed or corrupted driver install attempts, all sorts of
things really.

Look under these categories in particular:

+Human Interface Devices
+Other Devices
+Sound, video and game controllers
+Universal serial bus controllers

Obviously you would want to uninstall any driver that shouldn't be there, but pay particular attention to things like these:

USB Composite Device
Composite USB Device
USB Audio Device
USB Human Interface Device
USB Device
Unknown Device
*3rd party USB drivers no longer in use or installed multiple times. *Edirol drivers you are having problems installing.

Delete these or any driver duplicates and then restart your computer. After you have completed these instructions your Edirol driver should be reinstalled to end the procedure. MIDI and audio ports will then be visible in your software."

Counterparts · Post by **Counterparts** » Fri Jul 21, 2006 2:10 am

Aye, that is standard Windows behaviour. The idea is that should a (removed) device ever be reconnected to the system, then Windows already has the driver settings for that device ready-to-go.

I think that there's also some registry hackery which can get around this problem.

Royston

Aries · Post by **Aries** » Fri Jul 21, 2006 3:38 am

On 2006-07-20 17:07, Tau wrote:
"The problem is probably caused by a 10 USB driver limitation in Windows XP/2000.

Click on "Start" and choose "Run," then type in "cmd" as the command line. Click "OK" and a DOS prompt will open. Type the following commands one line at a time, hitting enter after each:

set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1
start devmgmt.msc

The Device Manager will now open up, so click on the View menu and choose "Show Hidden Devices."

You can alternatively get to device manager using control panel -> System -> Hardware -> Device Manager.

Tau · Post by **Tau** » Fri Jul 21, 2006 5:01 am

On 2006-07-21 04:38, Aries wrote:

You can alternatively get to device manager using control panel -> System -> Hardware -> Device Manager.

Yes, but it will not show you the hidden devices that way... Crazy! Give it a try!

Aries · Post by **Aries** » Fri Jul 21, 2006 5:28 am

On 2006-07-21 06:01, Tau wrote:
On 2006-07-21 04:38, Aries wrote:

You can alternatively get to device manager using control panel -> System -> Hardware -> Device Manager.
Yes, but it will not show you the hidden devices that way... Crazy! Give it a try!

Yes it does allow you to show hidden devices. In View drop down menu, in device manager, it says "Show hidden devices".

Tau · Post by **Tau** » Fri Jul 21, 2006 6:27 am

OK, I tried it that way, through control panel > system > ... > show hidden devices. I had done this many times before, just out of curiosity, and it shows a few extra unusual devices.

BUT when I do it via command line, as stated on the doc above, a lot more devices show up, and the old USB MIDI drivers, older driver versions of the audio cards etc. can only be seen this way!

This is what is happening here, on both my computers (XP Pro), so I'd reccomend trying it out from the command prompt once, as described. If you can't see a difference between both methods, it could be because you have no older or corrupted / aborted installation drivers, and therefore, all is well!

Cheers,

T

H-Rave · Post by **H-Rave** » Fri Jul 21, 2006 7:30 am

Yep Nice one,I was a bit sceptic at first but your right.

katano · Post by **katano** » Fri Jul 21, 2006 12:25 pm

yep, nice one. i work with windows since the beginning but didn't knew that, cool...

cheers
roman

at0m · Post by **at0m** » Thu Aug 03, 2006 8:59 am

Once made this screenshot, confusing many...