How to remove the hidden USB devices in the Device Manager & USB device not being recognised after installing the wrong driver.

To make sure that all of USB drivers have been removed, you need to remove the hidden USB devices in the Device Manager.

To do that you have to set the Device Manager up to show all hidden devices and details of devices that are installed but which are not currently attached to the computer. It is not sufficient just to open the Device Manager, open its View menu and enable Show Hidden Devices.

Open a command prompt window by entering cmd in the Start => Run box and enter the following commands exactly as they are written. Press the Enter key after entering each line:

set DEVMGR_SHOW_DETAILS=1
set DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES=1
start devmgmt.msc

This sets up and opens the Device Manager. Click the View menu item and choose Show Hidden Devices to see the entries for the devices that have been installed before but which are not currently connected. These will appear as faded grey icons compared to the other icons for devices that are installed.

Double-click on each of the entries for Disk drives, Other devices, and Universal Serial Bus (USB) controllers, right click on any icon that is greyed-out, and choose Uninstall from the menu. For example, under Universal Serial Bus controllers, there may be several greyed-out entries called USB Mass Storage Device. These should all be removed.

Next, open the Registry Editor by entering regedit in the Start => Run box.

Note well that before you make changes to the Registry, you should always create a restore point in System Restore under All Programs => Accessories => System Tools so that you can recover the system from Safe Mode should you erroneously remove entries that prevent Windows from booting.

By clicking on the + signs beside each name, navigate to Hkey_Local_Machine => System => CurrentControlSet => Enum => USB and remove Registry entries that refer to vendor ID (VID). You remove an entry in the Registry by right clicking on it with the mouse pointer on the entry and then you click on Delete in the menu that comes up. The entries that are required will be redetected when Windows restarts and you connect your USB devices. Note well that if you use a USB keyboard or mouse, don’t remove the VID entries for them, because doing so could prevent Windows from starting properly.

If you can’t delete a key, you may need to change its permissions by right-clicking on it and choosing Permissions. Select Everyone and then select Full Control in the Permissions section. Click Apply and then OK.

When you reboot the computer, your USB devices should be recognised correctly.

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