Why doesn't Windows recognize a USB device plugged into another port? (2004)

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2004/11/10/255047.aspx

131 152 11 years ago

blogs.msdn.com

SG-2• 11 years ago

Small things like this is what starts bothering me about Windows (they add up). The 'Found New Hardware' wizard will also come up each time you plug it in a different USB port (along with the annoyances that comes with).

LoSboccacc2• 11 years ago

and (until recentest version of windows) you will get a copy of the same printer according to each usb port, with all the others showing up as disconnected.

SG-2• 11 years ago

Yes along with USB network adapters (you lose whatever settings you set). Just a pain and not what anyone would actually want.

Jgrubb2• 11 years ago

Ha, I forgot about that. It was a hundred (thousand?) little things like that that ran me into Mac's loving arms seven years ago.

edoloughlin• 11 years ago

I'm sure these little niggles accumulate easily when your devs never have the equivalent of the "Steve's gonna kill/fire/humiliate me if my code ever inconveniences him" thought at the back of their minds.

Jgrubb2• 11 years ago

And god bless him for that.

lucb1e2• 11 years ago

It's not a hardware thing though. Linux systems work with USB devices instantly, as soon as you plug them in, without any installation phase. That makes it a software thing Microsoft did wrong.

TazeTSchnitzel10• 11 years ago

Linux systems work instantly because they only have to support one (usually sorely lacking) driver for any device ID, and if this is a problem, don't need to prevent a friendly user interface to fix it. They don't have to deal with the real world.

tonyedgecombe• 11 years ago

I remember around the time of the article unplugging a USB key from my iMac without ejecting would crash the whole machine.

Dylan168077• 11 years ago

Of course this isn't the only way it could have been done. Settings could have optimistically traveled from port to port until the system saw two at once of the same device with either no serial number or the same serial number.

chinathrow• 11 years ago

Wow, I wonder if that still is a thing?

Joona• 11 years ago

Sure is. Just plugged in my USB sound card again yesterday, different port I suppose, and the settings reset.

chrisan• 11 years ago

I had the unfortunate experience where my Win7 would not recognize ANY new usb device. I had my keyboard, mouse, and n52 from years of use. I could freely swap them to all of my usb ports and they would still work. However the moment I tried any NEW usb device (like a new mouse or game pad) it would never recognize it. The devices worked on other Win7 computers and my Mac.

I have never been more stumped and ended up reformatting (which I had been wanting to do anyways to move to a 1TB ssd)

mdip2• 11 years ago

I've seen this behavior from time to time.

The fix for it was pretty awful, as well. Under "System Devices", I'd locate the parts of the chipset associated with USB and PCI, find the driver the OS was referencing and remove the files associated with that driver from wherever in the OS they were being grabbed[1]. Then I'd download the chipset drivers from the chipset (not motherboard) manufacturer and install those. The problem always went away after that step, but often took several reboots to get everything exactly right for the new drivers.

It seemed to happen most commonly in Windows XP with motherboards that were Intel based and had USB 2 controllers with third-party (I want to say Realtek[2]) USB 3 controllers. At the time, Intel had no chipset that included a USB 3 controller so motherboard manufacturers would use a non-Intel controller for the USB 3 ports and the Intel controller for the USB 2 ports.

It's possible my problems were simply an artifact of working with USB 3 devices that were bleeding edge and not implemented exactly right, but in all cases replacing the chipset drivers with the ones provided by the chipset folks did the trick. Doing the same with the ones provided by the motherboard manufacturer (often ASUS for me) would result in the same behavior.

[1] The best way to do this, I've found, is to remove the files associated with the broken drivers and reboot. Once they came up as "Unknown Devices", I'd proceed with the installation of the drivers I grabbed from Intel/Whomever. If the device was detected properly -- in the case of this specific problem -- the new driver would be skipped in favor of the one provided by the motherboard or the Windows installation.

[2] I may not have this right. I tend to jump to Realtek when I think about devices I've had terrible experiences with. Their network adapters that seem to be included on a lot of lower quality motherboards have given me so many problems that I no longer purchase boards with them installed and if I have no other choice, I'll buy an Ethernet adapter from someone else and use up one of my PCIx slots just to avoid their drivers.

gbl08ma2• 11 years ago

That, and Windows also seems to create a different network connection profile for the same wireless adapter, every time I plug it into a different USB port. I always end up with something like "Local Area Connection 4" just because that's the fourth different port I've connected it to.

Other operating systems do not seem to suffer from these problems as badly, and this MSDN post is from 2004 (three major Windows versions, soon four, will have been released since then), so does anyone know what are the current roadblocks to getting this behavior changed? As someone else said, these kinds of annoyances add up (you really notice them better if you frequently use other OS).

TazeTSchnitzel10• 11 years ago

Why would you want the behaviour changed? If the device has no serial number, acting differently depending on the port is quite important.

gbl08ma2• 11 years ago

Unfortunately I don't have two devices with the same ID and no serial number to test, but assuming Linux et al deal with them correctly, there sure must be some way? I guess Windows could resort to using the bus/device number information only when there is no other way of distinguishing between two devices (serial number, USB PID/VID...).

The impression I get is that when Windows executes the "Found new hardware" thing, it installs (usually from Windows Update, if the setting is enabled) the drivers, but it's as if the drivers were installed for that USB port only... it appears to install the driver again and again as I move the device to other ports. This is not the way Linux deals with device drivers (once a driver exists in the kernel or is available as a kernel module, it works irregardless of the port), and as far as I know on OS X and BSD kernels it's similar.

marcosdumay3• 11 years ago

Every network adapter has a global identifier. Every network currently in use require it.

kristopolous• 11 years ago

This is an MS site? Honestly, I'm liking this no-bullshit thing MS has been doing lately.

krig4• 11 years ago

The post is from 2004. This no-bullshit thing isn't exactly new. :)

LoSboccacc2• 11 years ago

you could always find non bulshitting ms people around:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/ http://sortingitoutv2.wordpress.com/ < this was on MSDN and moved here, most old content disappeared and is available trough archive.org

MS is so big, hard to judge by a handful of individuals either ways

danielsamuels• 11 years ago

..and by lately, you mean 11 years ago.

sveiss• 11 years ago

Raymond Chen's blog in particular has been well worth reading for insight into why MS has made some of the crazy-seeming technical decisions it has for well over a decade now.

A lot of them boil down to "incredible contortions to support applications written years ago to which the source code, and probably the original developers, are no longer available."

krig4• 11 years ago

I have not only this issue with windows, but on my gaming machine, unless I unplug my Microsoft-made keyboard when booting, the OS blue screens [1]. Of course if I then don't plug it back into the same USB port as before, it will reinstall the drivers...

(I also find it amusing that this happens with devices made by Microsoft themselves; you'd think they would make sure it worked, wouldn't you)

[1] http://www.hanselman.com/blog/FIXEDBlueScreenOfDeathBSOD7EIn...

stinos• 11 years ago

Never had that problem here; maybe it's some of the intermediate hardware, or the ocmbination thereof with the keyaboard, which is the actual culprit?

krig4• 11 years ago

The same computer and hardware runs both Linux and Mac OS without issues, so if it's some other piece of hardware, Windows is the only one choking on it. And it only manifests when the Microsoft keyboard is plugged in.

So yeah. Sure, possibly it is some other piece of hardware in combination that is exposing brokenness in the MS USB drivers. But that doesn't change the fact that the software is the problem here.

UnoriginalGuy• 11 years ago

You may wish to enable kernel dumps, reproduce the BSoD, then install Debugging Tools for Windows. Now spin up WinDbg and inspect the kernel dump to see what is really causing this.

Looks like a corrupt Windows install to me, but you'll know more after WinDbg. Scandisk (with fix bad sectors) and the Windows memory checker might also reveal how the OS became damaged.

krig4• 11 years ago

I could do all that. Or, I can unplug the keyboard while booting. :)

pmontra4• 11 years ago

The thread is from 2004, it should go into the title.

I've been using Windows XP until January 2009, then I reformatted my laptop with Ubuntu. One of the first things I noticed was that it instantaneously recognized pen drives without going through all that found new device dance. OS X is also fast at mounting USB drives. I just can't understand the technical reasons that make Windows annoy people with that. Is it still the same with Windows 8?

mavroprovato2• 11 years ago

To be fair, newer versions of Windows are much better in autodetecting devices when compared to XP.

jebblue2• 11 years ago

I consult a lot which means I often have to use a Windows desktop because the IT staff needs it to run Office for people who only know one email client. I mostly work in Linux usually in a VM in these case. To you point, on a new machine designed to run Windows 7, 3 times in the past few months I plug in my external keyboard and it fails. The only resolution is to reboot the windows machine. At least once I've had my USB headset fail, had to reboot Windows. In the past year on a different machine also designed to run Windows I could not get it to detect my Android phone while my Ubuntu desktop has never failed on 3 different machines running Ubuntu.

When people say in any thread that Windows driver support is superior to Linux; the answer from my experience on a number of machines is still no.

sudioStudio64• 11 years ago

XP came out at the same time that Redhat 6.2 was out. I wonder how it recognized usb drives?

pmontra4• 11 years ago

I've got a Redhat 6.2 CD. I wonder if it installs on some old laptop of mine but don't wait for news anytime soon :-)

ptaipale2• 11 years ago

What?

Windows XP was published in October 2001. The latest Service Pack (SP3) was published in April 2008.

RHEL 6.2 was released in December 2011. So even the latest XP release is 3.5 years older than RHEL 6.2 (which does recognize USB drives quite fine).

jahnu• 11 years ago

Some of that stuff is a result of legacy issues where Microsoft tried to handle badly made USB devices as well as possible. For example the reason Windows used to try and install the device again every time you switched ports was because USB device vendors really often didn't use a unique ID so identifying the device was tricky. Coupled with the multi-year release cycle that Windows had and Microsoft's mission to keep backward compatibility meant we had to put up with a lot of this stuff for a long time.

TazeTSchnitzel10• 11 years ago

"legacy issues"? If only. Some vendors still do this stuff today.

ackalker• 11 years ago

I'm wondering why Microsoft didn't add the unique serial number requirement to its WHQL driver testing, allowing vendors who realize too late that their shipped devices don't have a unique serial number to add the "magic registry key" (for ignoring the serial number) to their next WHQL driver candidate.

nolok2• 11 years ago

Win 7/8: the device install process is still there but it's instant, you wouldn't even know if it weren't for the notification popup in the tray.

My issue on the other hand, is that it keeps asking to "scan and fix errors" when you plugin thumb drives if you take them out without using "eject" first.

pmontra4• 11 years ago

I think that's a good idea. You can lose all the drive by pulling it out without stopping it first. It happened to me a couple of times. Even if that scan and fix thing was only a way to scare people into ejecting drives, I think it's worth it.

kevin_thibedeau• 11 years ago

There's also the dumbed down interface that prevents you from partitioning flash drives.

SteveMoody73• 11 years ago

I've noticed that OS X seems to flag a USB drive as needing to be scanned until it is ejected. More than once I've copied files off a USB device and unplugged without ejecting and as soon as it's plugged into windows it comes up with scan option.

It does get you into the habit of ejecting the drive first

JoeAltmaier3• 11 years ago

That's shameful negligence. There's no reason the drive shouldn't be fully consistent seconds after activity on the drive goes idle. What responsible driver writer would leave uncommitted blocks indefinitely!

Said as a driver writer who always commits blocks on an activity one-shot.

fluidcruft2• 11 years ago

I thought the "scan and fix errors" is file-system dependent. IIRC, if you're using something ancient and dumb like FAT32, it doesn't show up, but if you use something non-ancient and intelligent like NTFS it does. (I don't know how exfat is handled).

Try pulling out a mounted ext4 drive on Linux, it will also be marked dirty and request fsck.

drzaiusapelord2• 11 years ago

if you take them out without using "eject" first.

That's not exactly true. That only happens if the NTFS volume has a dirty bit set. That happens when you corrupt something and some check fails. I pull drives in and out all the time without ejecting and almost never see the error you mention.

If you pull the drive when there's a write going on, then you'll activate the dirty bit and get that message.

simias• 11 years ago

Not only pen drives but also keyboards and mices. At home I often switch my keyboard from one laptop to the other and while it's always enabled near-instantly on linux it always takes a few seconds on windows (and especially the first time). It always annoyed me.

This is actually one of the few areas where linux is significantly superior to windows from an average "destktop" user's perspective. For instance getting PS3 controller to work on windows is (used to be?) very painful. On linux I plug it and it just works. Same for network-over-usb "RNDIS" devices but that might be more of a niche.

rplnt• 11 years ago

Isn't it caused by different kernel designs? Or is it only user-space implementation that causes this? I mean how long does it take to recognize and initialize a device.

deckiedan• 11 years ago

Same here. I normally work exclusively on macs & gnu/linux boxen, and when recently doing a stint in a windows 7 pro environment was in utter disbelief that plugging in a USB keyboard or mouse could occasionally require waiting over a minute before it became usable, often with a popup saying, "new drivers installed, you should probably restart" or similar. The environment is a bit odd - on a ship, so restricted internet and permissions, but even still. What the hell does windows need to go looking for drivers for a bog standard USB mouse???

freshyill• 11 years ago

My favorite similar WTF Windows behavior (I hope this is fixed by now):

Drag a file onto an application in the taskbar (as you would with a Dock icon in OS X), and it doesn't just fail to open it in that application—it actually gives you an alert saying "you can't drag things onto the taskbar" or something like that.

So they built in the ability to tell people they can't do it, instead of building the ability to actually do what people clearly already wanted to do. Classic Microsoft UX.

sigzero• 11 years ago

Yeah, that one is annoying for the message and the non-effort by MS behind it.

TazeTSchnitzel10• 11 years ago

The reason it's not allowed is probably because it's unclear what it should do. Windows doesn't have a means to do a generic drag-and-drop onto a whole application. They'd have to get every application updated to support it.

agumonkey2• 11 years ago

I'm not that hard on MS, I learned so late that you could drag icons on taskbar-minimized application to reopen them and then drag the file to use it. Saw that from an average guy dropping mp3 files in winamp. I was silently screaming in awe.

pjc50• 11 years ago

There's a discussion of this on the same blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2004/11/24/26923...

beowulfey• 11 years ago

I switch between fedora, osx and windows 8.1 on the regular. It's not fixed, and drives me crazy every time I have to wait for the window to open before I can plop down my file.

Grazester• 11 years ago

In Windows 8 its pretty fast(less than 5 seconds, just tried) but it did come up with a prompt saying new device found. I don't know if you realise that you are comparing an OS released in 2001(winxp) to Ubuntu, an OS that wasn't around until three years after XP's release.Chances are you are even comparing it to a version of ubuntu that is much more recent that it's 2004 initial release.

e12e2• 11 years ago

The initial Ubuntu release leaned heavily on Debian -- so I don't think the comparison is entirely unfair. Debian started in 1993, and Debian 1.1 "Buzz" was released in 1996.

Now, I can't really remember when I first came across an usb device -- but I also can't remember them ever causing me trouble in Debian.

LoneWolf• 11 years ago

From my experience with windows 8 is even slower, it consistently stays there for 5 minutes saying it is installing etc (but sometimes the drive is ready within 30sec, but the message stays)

IshKebab• 11 years ago

Well this still happens in Windows 7.

mclemme• 11 years ago

On a related note, I got weird behaviour once I switched to an SSD on my Win7 gaming machine, now it boots so fast into the logon screen that the keyboard doesn't work until 2-5 seconds after the logon screen appears.

I'm wondering if it has something to do with the OS not recognizing my keyboard, although I always have it plugged into the same USB port.

vetinari2• 11 years ago

I'm using laptop with external keyboard and mouse, connected via hub.

After waking up the laptop from the sleep, the keyboard does not work for a few seconds (so no entering password at the lock screen). The mouse does work, though.

joosters• 11 years ago

Interesting comment in the discussion after the article: Chips with unique serial numbers cost $0.76 per 1000:

http://www.maximintegrated.com/en/products/digital/memory-pr...

I never realised they could be so cheap (and in bulk, much cheaper). At those kind of prices, every device could have a unique ID.

yitchelle2• 11 years ago

Looking from the OEM's perspective, if they didn't need to add the Maxim part to BOM, it gives them a better profit margin. If the OEM manufactures 1,000,000 USB devices, that could result in a extra profit of $760, (Based on the back of envelope calculations).

Edit: Corrected the maths, thanks Syi.

Syi• 11 years ago

You've added a few too many 0's to that, the savings for 1,000,000 USB devices would only be $760 which would definitely be worth it for customer satisfaction.

cnvogel• 11 years ago

One should make it clear that the quoted price on the Maxim product page is $0,76 @ 1000, so if you order 1000, you pay 76cent per chip. But you can easily find offers going down to about 50 cent.

https://octopart.com/search?q=DS2401%2B

As the DS2401 uses the 1wire bus, which requires a relatively complicated logic inside the chip handling device isolation and power recovery from the data line, it's not the cheapest option. Maxim, for example, has a SPI connected digital serialnumber chip going down to 35 cents.

https://octopart.com/search?q=25AA02UID

These chips all come in small SOT sized packages, if you really want to shave off the last cent the companies will be happy to sell you the bare dice you glue on your PCB, bond with wires directly to the board and protect with a glob of epoxy. Also: if you are going to build 1 million devices you'll not pay the standard list-prices but your procurement department will negotiate with high-volume sellers or the chip manufacturers directly. So, you'd probably pay around half.

But then.... if you are going to build 1 million devices you really want to have individually numbered, you might not use the off-the-shelf USB controller without serial number plus a 20cent serial-number chip, no, you'll redesign to use a 5cent more expensive usb-controller with unique serial number, and leave out the external serial-number chip completely.

e12e2• 11 years ago

I really have no idea -- but I imagine the cost of adding a component/chip (any chip) would be higher than the price of the chip itself.

Layout changes, testing, assembly (even if automated) etc?

linker3000• 11 years ago

...closely followed by "why after 3 days of on/off trying can't I get my bluetooth headset working under Windows 8.1"

/Got it working once, for an afternoon.

mdip2• 11 years ago

I noticed this behavior in early versions of the Windows 20xx family, but I found a consistency to it that wasn't mentioned in the article and now I'm left wondering if I was completely wrong in my assumption.

In my case any USB version 2 device would be detected as "new" if it was plugged into any port other than the one it was first plugged into, however, all of my version 1 devices would work without Windows "forgetting about them" when they were plugged into another port.

Does anyone have any insight on this? Did manufacturers supply a serial number more consistently with early version devices or was it just my (somewhat massive) collection of those devices that was at fault?

noja• 11 years ago

Why does Linux?

andmarios5• 11 years ago

Fun story. Once I helped a friend with his Arduino code. I program the Arduino on his Windows PC and remove it. There were still issues, so we had to program it once more. “Great” he says, “now we have to reboot”. “Why” I ask and he replies “these are windows man, they aren't like your linux machine”. In disbelief I connect the Arduino to the USB port but indeed, Windows fail to detect it. Trying to be smart, I pull out his usb mouse receiver and swap USB ports with the Arduino. The PC recognizes it and I feel triumphant. “Now you've done it” he says, “we have to reboot if we ever expect Windows to recognize this mouse again, you don't just move things between USB ports in Windows”.

He still uses Windows to this day, I guess we value different things as important in our OSes. :)

pmelendez6• 11 years ago

Well that's an odd problem and not usual at all (at least not for me and my 4 Windows machines).

However, my main computer in my last job was an Ubuntu machine (A Dell with hardware linux-friendly components) and the amount of oddities weren't even funny. (Like having to uninstall your video driver before update to avoid losing a morning making boot again)

I guess we value different things as important in our OSes.

andmarios5• 11 years ago

Well, the problem you describe is an odd problem and not usual at all (at least not for me and my 4 Linux machines). ;)

jebblue2• 11 years ago

I've only seen better support for hardware across all machines I've ever run Linux on compared to Windows. That is experience across over 2 dozen machines in the past 10 years.

keithpeter2• 11 years ago

Ubuntu: "(Like having to uninstall your video driver before update to avoid losing a morning making boot again)"

Which driver was that?

If it was the nvidia proprietary driver then there are ways of installing the driver so it rebuilds the kernel module to avoid all that.

TazeTSchnitzel10• 11 years ago

This is almost certainly not a problem with Windows, but with the device drivers the Arduino uses.

andmarios5• 11 years ago

The real problem for me wasn't with the arduino that is an edge case for most users but with the usb mouse.

The arduino though only uses a USB to Serial converter, nothing fancy.

raverbashing2• 11 years ago

". They gave all of their devices serial numbers, that's great, but they all got the same serial number"

Yes, there are functioning adults that work in technology that don't understand the concept of a serial number

Source: was very glad of not making 'serial number' of a certain product in a database the primary key, when repeated serial numbers started to arrive (it was not our responsibility to generate those numbers)

jessaustin• 11 years ago

ISTM that primary keys should be completely internal to the DB. You can always add another column with a unique index, if someone lies to you that any particular datum is unique. Then when dupes roll in like they usually do, you can just drop the index.

A great frustration of mine in a previous job was that a predecessor had informed the accounting department of internal keys used for a many-to-many relation in the configuration of a process that journalled transactions from the billing system to the accounting system. That meant I could never reconfigure the janky-ass, inefficient way that journaling was set up, because the accountants knew how it should be.

Aardwolf• 11 years ago

Give it any explanation you want, in Linux I can plug in 3 mice in 3 different USB ports and they all work immediately without any "recognising and configuring", so it should be technically possible for Windows to also have it work immediately.

smilekzs• 11 years ago

Have you actually tried plugging them when running Windows? They might actually do okay.

cabirum2• 11 years ago

Yes, but then you realize you cannot make mouse back-forward buttons to work.

hackmiester4• 11 years ago

I'm a little confused on this - my G500 "requires Windows drivers" but this functionality worked out of the box on Linux.

anon4• 11 years ago

Microsoft really picked the wrong abstraction here. They wanted it so that each device can be separately configured and known, implementing a system that can support if you plug ten devices that are exactly the same, but want them configured differently. Whereas on linux, it's more like "if I plug in a logitech xyz mouse, I want it working like so". Ultimately, I think not even power users have much use for this behaviour being the default, but it's too late to change it on Windows. Maybe if they let you define a set of devices for which you WANT settings to be keyed by port+device, whereas the rest you want keyed only by device type.

zx2c4• 11 years ago

Nugget of wisdom from the comments:

"Device manager hides devices that are no longer connected, even when "Show hidden devices" is on. The workaround is to set an environment variable DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES but this is one of those tips thats not widely know and it can get frustrating trying to fix problems."

stephengillie• 11 years ago

Win7/8 actually stop installing a device driver when the device is removed. This is especially frustrating when you've got an intermittent connection on a USB device; Windows begins device discovery, then aborts, begins again, aborts.

Learn2win• 11 years ago

Not just windows; it acts that way on my Mac as well

agumonkey2• 11 years ago

Sometimes linux usb stack is stateful too. I have some ghost /dev/sd* nodes hanging. Also some embedded devices usb chipset is bogus, causing duplicate descriptors and duplicate devices (one being DOA).

valisystem• 11 years ago

I don't see why this could not have been done in a invisible fashion for the user.

kabdib• 11 years ago

Many USB devices over time also starts to fill the registry with . . . stuff, leading to more slowness and instability as the system ages. WTF.

I found out that for a few years I sat next to the guy largely responsible for this behavior. I had no idea. Not that I wanted to slug him, but, but . . . argh :-)

tripzilch• 11 years ago

So it's because some USB devices might report the same ID and Windows doesn't want to accidentally confuse one for the other, right?

What would actually need to happen for this to go wrong? You'd need two different USB devices, that are not only cheap/bad (using a non-unique ID), but they'd have to just happen to actually share the ID as well.

Isn't that a rather unlikely thing to happen? Unless many devices report a very common ID such as 0, or something.

Then, I'd have to unplug one device, and plug in the other into a different port, and what would happen is the OS would try and "talk" to the device using the wrong driver, yes?

But, given that Windows doesn't go through the whole "installing new device" spiel if you plug the same device again into the same port ... what if I would unplug that device, and then plug the other device (that reports the same ID as the first) into that same USB port. Then Windows would still get confused right? So the problem isn't even really solved, at all. It just makes it slightly less likely to happen (by a factor of your number of free USB ports).

Okay so that is one thing. But then, from what I read in this thread, I get the idea that Linux in fact does consider devices with the same ID to be the same device, regardless of port (correct?). So, in Linux you'd run into this problem? Has anyone ever actually experienced it? Because I certainly haven't.

And then there's the part that, if the problem occurs, you'll figure it out real quick, because it only happens right after you plug in this new USB toy that you recently bought, on the cheap. That's not too bad, is it? I bought a €1.50 USB-hub a while back, noticed my keyboard and mouse started acting glitchy, didn't take a second to figure out it was probably that cheap thing, and threw it out.

Why doesn't Windows recognize a USB device plugged into another port? (2004)

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