How to Fix 'USB Device is Not Recognized' Issue in Windows 8

[Marcus Yam]

What Do I Do if My USB Device is Not Recognized by Windows 8?

How to Fix 'USB Device is Not Recognized' Issue in Windows 8 : Read more

 

[omnimodis78]

Wow, an "update your drivers" recommendation. What a joke.

 

[kcops]

Wow, an "update your drivers" recommendation. What a joke.

They must not know their readers very well. I'm pretty sure most of us would know how to do this. The problem comes in when that doesn't find the driver... This happened to me when i was building a Windows Home Server 2011 and windows couldn't find drivers for my usb 3.0 ports. I eventually figured it out but it was a couple of weeks before I found correct drivers and articles like this only helps the very unexperienced.

 

[mariusmotea]

To be more helpful than this article "USB Device is Not Recognized" apears when one of DATA+ or DATA- wires are discontinued.

 

[bloodroses75]

Again, why do they say Windows 8 in the title (like the last article that was the same way) when this is common in the other versions of Windows as well?

 

[antilycus]

Or you can now understand why more people are downgrading to Win7 Pro, moving to apple, moving to linux and saying goodbye to the old microsoft as they stay FAR away from the new Microsoft.

 

[blackened144]

Again, why do they say Windows 8 in the title (like the last article that was the same way) when this is common in the other versions of Windows as well?

I havent had time to figured out exactly why this is happening yet, but after I last installed Windows 7 about a week ago, the drivers for my Rock Candy 360 controller would not install. Windows 7 detected it, reported it was the Rock Candy, found a driver online or had it in Windows, but then wouldnt install it. I have used this controller on Windows 7 for the last year or 2 and never had to do more than plug it in for it to work. I ended up having to manually modify the .inf to include the hardware ID for the controller for it to actually install the driver and get it working. This was the first time I used a new install disc for Windows 7 with SP1 and updates through Feb rather than the disc I have from when Windows 7 launched. Im assuming that something from the install disc is different, but Im not sure if its worth taking the time to figure out or if I should just download a new install image.

 

[vpoko]

Or you can now understand why more people are downgrading to Win7 Pro, moving to apple, moving to linux and saying goodbye to the old microsoft as they stay FAR away from the new Microsoft.

Do you actually have any figures on what you're claiming, or is this just what you're imagining must be happening?

 

[thundervore]

This is not a Windows 8 article. This can happen in Windows 7 or even Vista. How is it an atricle showing someone how to update their USB drivers even become worthy of becoming an article in 2014!!Also Step 12 is a complete joke. For example in my company we have desktops that the USB 3 ports will not work unless you downgrade the drivers from the latest ones posted through Microsoft to the old version hosted on HPs support website. So having Windows search for the drivers automatically is not always the best solution.

 

[Christopher Shaffer]

I've noticed this was an issue in Win8, but 8.1 seems to happen less often. However, it only seems to affect my USB 2.0 ports. Anything I plug into a 3.0 works fine.It should also be noted that a number of external drives (as in NOT thumb drives, but actual SSD/HDD externals) use a special USB 3.0 module internally that requires a driver from the manufacturer's site.WD Passport drives and I think some of the Seagate Backup Plus drives are like this.

 

[JonJongx]

My Linux is working better on my computer then Windows has ever worked on it . Besides from installing a printer driver on Linux I have not had to install any other drivers at all on it. I think Windows 8 was a mistake for Microsoft just like Vista . Did you have a bad experience with Linux banmaster ?

 

[hannibal]

Well, like people say above, this can happen in any operation system. This is for people who don't know how to fix it in win8. Because the win8 is still guite new to many people. There were are similar how to doto win7, win XP atc.. maybe even linux can have guidance how to install a new driver in there.People are reading too much about the topic...I personally never have had USB problems in win8, but some people might, so it is good to have help in "competer knowledge to to dumies" style! Hopefully this will be part of guidance bank and not just a separe article.There are allways people who can not manage without instructions "how to do thing X".

 

[zracer]

This "fixes" nothing. What this article has done is waste our time.Watch the video and read the text on the Wizard page at the end. The Wizard dialog reads "The best driver software for your devices is already installed." As a former 11 year MS veteran engineer in the Windows OS division, take the message on the last Wizard page at face value. There was no driver update of the device. Thus, bs.

 

[jalek]

Windows 8 has a lot of driver issues, but so many advocates refuse to even acknowledge them, so they'll never be fixed. My network printers work, but Windows always says they've failed to print, not in Linux. Video driver support is better in Linux. I have a CD/DVD drive that is sometimes recognized, but always fine in Linux.For a "new" OS this is pretty sad, even compared to another OS that was always criticized for poor driver support.

 

[Deleted member 1353997]

My Linux is working better on my computer then Windows has ever worked on it . Besides from installing a printer driver on Linux I have not had to install any other drivers at all on it. I think Windows 8 was a mistake for Microsoft just like Vista . Did you have a bad experience with Linux banmaster ?

In my case it's exactly the other way around; Windows always worked better on my computers than Linux ever did.

Although I never had to install any drivers in Linux either, I've never had to do it in Windows 7 or 8, since the OS does it in my stead automatically and fairly reliably. I don't even have to install graphics driver, though I do it anyways out of habit.

I can't speak for banmaster, but I've tried a couple of Linux distros, none of which survived longer than 3 months on any of my computers.

• 
  ■ Open SUSE would not boot properly as soon as I perform the very first update after installing the OS. An OS I can't update? No thank you.
  ■ Ubuntu's Nouveau drivers didn't work with my Quadro FX notebook. I still wasted time and effort to make it work by installing Nvidia's proprietary drivers by hand through the command line interface. In return for my effort, I got an OS that, after a couple of weeks, would no longer react to my mouse or keyboard inputs.
  ■ Elive had nice eye-candy, but there were always stuff crashing left and right and it was slow as hell.
  ■ PC Linux OS wouldn't install. Something about Xorg not being configured properly. Screw this shit.

In comparison, I've had experience with installing Windows XP, 7, and 8.
Apart from Windows XP, which refuses to install on hard drives that are too large, I never had any trouble whatsoever. In case of XP, fixing the issue was easy: create a partition that's not too large (make it 100GB to be safe), install XP on it, then expand the partition to fill the drive. That, or install a newer version of Windows.

I've long stopped dealing with dual-boot systems and started working with VMs instead (makes installing Linux distros that much less frustrating).
Surprise, surprise; the Linux distros are always the first to stop working (and not in the "not-responding" kind of way; more like the "not-booting-anymore-at-all" kind of way), even on a VM, whereas my Windows VMs are still alive and kicking.

Maybe I'm just TDTL (too dumb to Linux), but then again, so is 90% of the world.

 

[sc14s]

I'm pretty sure i remember dealing with this issue, or something really similar back when i used XP lol, my usb headset didn't like my zip drive or something weird like that iirc.

 

[FFH]

I'm sure someone's going to make a joke about uninstalling windows 8 and "upgrading to windows 7." Anyway, I doubt this is a huge issue. If it was, I would've heard a lot of complaints on the various windows forums I frequent.