Need to update USB drivers to prevent PC lockup and crashes

[MartinC]

Using WinXP Home SP3, I have been having problems recently with lockups and
crashes. One time, after selecting to send an error report to MS, it
returned with a web page stating that the problem was with one of my USB
drivers.

As I have been playing recently with VMWare Player to run Win98 virtually,
it is possible that the installation of the Win98 USB driver somehow went
astray and ended up in XP instead. That might explain the problem.

From XP, I went into device manager and uninstalled everything under the
'Universal Serial Bus controllers', including the Generic USB Hub and all
the USB Root Hub entries.

After the reboot, I had expected the PC to request the WinXP CD to get back
the drivers (as I had supposedly uninstalled them). However, the PC seemed
to get the relevant drivers from somewhere other than the CD. As a result,
until the PC locks or crashes again, I do not know if the drivers have been
updated correctly or not - or whether the corrupted drivers have been either
reused or not uninstalled in the first place.

I had also tried searching MS Update for any missing drivers for the USB,
but nothing showed up.

Is there a way of forcing the USB drivers to be updated from the WinXP CD
and if so, how do I go about doing this and in which directory would they
exist.

TIA

Martin

 

[Shenan Stanley]

Using WinXP Home SP3, I have been having problems recently with
lockups and crashes. One time, after selecting to send an error
report to MS, it returned with a web page stating that the problem
was with one of my USB drivers.

As I have been playing recently with VMWare Player to run Win98
virtually, it is possible that the installation of the Win98 USB
driver somehow went astray and ended up in XP instead. That might
explain the problem.
From XP, I went into device manager and uninstalled everything
under the 'Universal Serial Bus controllers', including the Generic
USB Hub and all the USB Root Hub entries.

After the reboot, I had expected the PC to request the WinXP CD to
get back the drivers (as I had supposedly uninstalled them).
However, the PC seemed to get the relevant drivers from somewhere
other than the CD. As a result, until the PC locks or crashes
again, I do not know if the drivers have been updated correctly or
not - or whether the corrupted drivers have been either reused or
not uninstalled in the first place.
I had also tried searching MS Update for any missing drivers for
the USB, but nothing showed up.

Is there a way of forcing the USB drivers to be updated from the
WinXP CD and if so, how do I go about doing this and in which
directory would they exist.

USB ports part of the motherboard?

Visit the motherboard manufacturer's web site - support and/or downloads
section. Grab the latest motherboard/chipset drivers for your motherboard
and/or chipset and install them.

 

[David B.]

1. If you installed the Win98 USB drivers from within the VM, they are not
the cause of your problem as they cannot affect the host OS.
2. XP will almost never ask for the CD as it has everything it needs on the
hard drive, if it installed drivers upon reboot they are very likely the
ones it needs.
3. Without knowing the exact error message there's not much we can suggest
other than to check the USB devices you use for updates, not just the USB
controllers.

 

[Guest]

Using WinXP Home SP3, I have been having problems recently with lockups and
crashes. One time, after selecting to send an error report to MS, it
returned with a web page stating that the problem was with one of my USB
drivers.

As I have been playing recently with VMWare Player to run Win98 virtually,
it is possible that the installation of the Win98 USB driver somehow went
astray and ended up in XP instead. That might explain the problem.

From XP, I went into device manager and uninstalled everything under the
'Universal Serial Bus controllers', including the Generic USB Hub and all
the USB Root Hub entries.

After the reboot, I had expected the PC to request the WinXP CD to get back
the drivers (as I had supposedly uninstalled them). However, the PC seemed
to get the relevant drivers from somewhere other than the CD. As a result,
until the PC locks or crashes again, I do not know if the drivers have been
updated correctly or not - or whether the corrupted drivers have been either
reused or not uninstalled in the first place.

I had also tried searching MS Update for any missing drivers for the USB,
but nothing showed up.

Is there a way of forcing the USB drivers to be updated from the WinXP CD
and if so, how do I go about doing this and in which directory would they
exist.

TIA

Martin

I messed around trying to get usb to work in Sun VirtualBOX.
USB Hard drives are already emulated. When I tried to use a webcam,
it appeared that both the host operating system AND the emulated operating
system tried to install the device and fought over access to it.
I didn't try too hard, but never did figure out how to make anything USB
work. Might be as simple as disabling the device in the host's device
manager.

FWIW, there's a universal "native usb driver for win98SE".
Does a great job in a host OS...never tried it in an emulator.

As for drivers, I've been researching a usb2.0 problem.
It appears that there are licensing terms that prohibit vendors from
distributing USB drivers. If it's not included in XP, you can't get it.
Not clear that the host usb drivers will help you. Does the system crash
when the emulator is not running?

Device manager should tell you which drivers it thinks it's loaded.
You can search the i386 directory on the CD for the name without the .xxx
extension. You can extract it and compare to what's being used.
If it's different, you have to decide whether it's different because
of a valid update you need or a corrupt file.
Then you have to copy it to the proper directory and
figure out how to purge it from the driver cache. sfc.exe has an
option that looks like it might do that, but I've never tried it.
There are also utilities that claim to be able to overwrite files
in use by creating a script that's executed at the next boot.

If I were a betting man, I'd bet that the problem is with the emulator,
not the host drivers.

 

[Mick Murphy]

A lot of older Motherboards came with USB 1.0.
You need USB 2.0

Go into Device manager>right click on your USB controllors>Properties>And
get the USB 2.0 from the Net option when it asks about CD or net option this
one time.