USB 2.0 ports

[Rick Charnes]

I'm having some problems with two of my four USB 2.0 ports, added via a
new card six months ago (motherboard has two USB 1.1 ports). Whenever I
try to re-install the drivers, Windows tells me that "a function driver
was not specified for this device instance."

I've played around with drivers and .INF files and Device Manager long
enough to suspect that it's not going to get fixed this way. Is it a
reasonable approach to just unplug the card and plunk it down in another
slot under the assumption that Windows'll then be forced to re-do
everything...

 

[Rick]

I'm having some problems with two of my four USB 2.0 ports, added via a
new card six months ago (motherboard has two USB 1.1 ports). Whenever I
try to re-install the drivers, Windows tells me that "a function driver
was not specified for this device instance."

I've played around with drivers and .INF files and Device Manager long
enough to suspect that it's not going to get fixed this way. Is it a
reasonable approach to just unplug the card and plunk it down in another
slot under the assumption that Windows'll then be forced to re-do
everything...

First step is to make sure the drivers you're using are actually
for the card you have. If the card has an NEC chipset it should
be able to use Microsoft's embedded USB2.0 driver.

Boot into Safe Mode, look through your \winnt\inf folder (it's
a hidden folder, so you may have to unhide it first) for a third
party INF file for your card, and rename or delete it. This can
be a little tricky -- make sure you're deleting the one from a
third party and *not* Microsoft's.

Then go into Device Manager and delete all USB controllers,
hubs and ports.

Keep your driver diskette (or folder) handy, and reboot. Point
to the driver INF when Windows autodetects the card.

 

[Rick Charnes]

THANK YOU VERY MUCH. What file is Microsoft's embedded USB 2.0 driver?
Isn't it USB.INF? The device with the yellow exclamation point points to
that file; I've always thought that that's the problem, and that I need
to point it elsewhere. Maybe I'm wrong?

 

[Rick]

On my system (Win2K SP3), Microsoft's USB2.0 INF is named
USB2.INF, although you'll need to put the whole driver set (not
just the INF) in a separate folder and point to it when you reinstall.
Including USBEHCI.SYS, USBPORT.SYS and HCCOIN.DLL
and possibly others depending on your hardware.