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USB Madness With Cooked-Off Ports

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Stoic Joker:
Okay, so USB is this "brilliant" technology that allows folks to turn their computers into a veritable pin cushion of devices plugged into huge spiderwebs of daisy-chained madness. Right up until something decides not to work ... which is quite common in my experience...

Eventually (and inevitably), you end up with one device that decides (for whatever reason) to Cook-Off its port. No by that I mean it effects a state where upon it will no-longer properly (and sometimes period) identify said device ever again, because the system is holding to some piece of corrupt data that is refuses to let go of so the damn thing can once again be identified properly. The port will stay eternally borked refusing to detect the device regardless of anything (I've come across so far...) tried.

However, if a spare USB port is available, the device can be (confirmed as working) plugged into it and will spring to life like a startled puppy. And that's just dandy if you have a spare USB port, which it almost never the case, as it's usually only after there are a dozen or so devices connected via USB before this little party starts.

Now I'm not specifying any of the hardware involved intentionally, as the details are irrelevant. I've seen this delightfully little phenomenon occur across all machines, from all manufacturers, and triggered by all manner of peripheral devices. The only point of commonality is USB ... Which I've come to call the Ubiquitously Stupid Buss for this exact behavior/reason.

My question being, does anyone know of a (light/fast/portable) utility that can view the existing (maze of virtual pathing) configuration, and either allow manual editing, diagnose and repair, or just purge (preferably purge...) the information that a given USB port is clinging onto?

mwb1100:
At first I thought you were talking about taking this other thread to the next stage: "USB Daisy-Chaining gone haywire"

But in all seriousness - I'd probably just reboot (as aggravating as that is).

cranioscopical:
Do you think that will carry over to USB 3.0?

Shades:
@Stoic Joker:
IIRC there is a setting (registry?) that enables the Windows device manager to show hidden devices. That includes All and every USB device ever connected. Uninstalling the troublesome device will help with this problem.

Stoic Joker:
At first I thought you were talking about taking this other thread to the next stage: "USB Daisy-Chaining gone haywire"

But in all seriousness - I'd probably just reboot (as aggravating as that is).
-mwb1100 (January 21, 2011, 10:05 AM)
--- End quote ---

This is way past a reboot-will-fix-it issue. This is more of a the inner workings of the OS need to be beaten with a hammer kind of issue.

@Stoic Joker:
IIRC there is a setting (registry?) that enables the Windows device manager to show hidden devices. That includes All and every USB device ever connected. Uninstalling the troublesome device will help with this problem.-Shades (January 21, 2011, 10:20 AM)
--- End quote ---

Yeah, I know what you're after there, a batch file will do it (used it many times for CD burner issues in the Win2k days):
@echo off
Echo Find Phantom Devices
set DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES=1
start devmgmt.msc
exit

But that's not what we're after here either. It is not a full device (present or otherwise) that is causing the problem. It's more of a fragment of a device, that is being clung to by the USB subsystem itself. I have literally seen and participated in this scenario many times:

Device X, plugged into Port X, and had been working there forever, just stops.
Nothing you do with or too Device X will bring it back to life (uninstall/reinstall/reboot/whatever), nothing...it is dead to Port X.

Now, the fun part.

Plug any other device into Port X, and it instantly springs to life and works perfectly.

Plug Device X into any other port ... and it instantly springs to life and works perfectly.

Plug Device X back into Port X ... and we're right back to it being deader than hell. Port X is/has been Cooked-Off.

If by chance you have the time, or are just that mad, flattening the machine and reinstalling the OS ... Will result in Device X once again happily working in Port X. Which does (/did in the past) at least confirm that is/was not a hardware problem ... but it is a bit over-the-top.

Hence my quest for something that will effectively flatten the dynamically created USB configuration info only and therefore allow the to X's to once again play nice together.

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