USB Error

On Monday evening, I was playing City of Heroes on my desktop computer, when, out of the blue, I received a pop up message stating that Windows 7 found a new USB device, and was attempting to install a device driver for it. It was quickly followed by another pop up message, stating that the device driver installation failed. A minute or so later, a third pop up message came up, stating that a USB device is malfunctioning. However, I only had three USB peripherals connected - a keyboard, a mouse, and a XBox 360 controller - and all three were working just fine. I just ignored it for the night.

Tuesday, I received another "device driver installation failed" pop up message, quickly followed by an "USB device is malfunctioning" pop up message. After that, I would hear a sound every 30 seconds or so, the sound Windows 7 makes when it's found a new device.

Last night, I turned off my power strip, unplugged the keyboard, mouse, and XBox 360 controller, plugged the keyboard, mouse, and XBox 360 controller back in, waited 10 minutes, turned the power strip back on, waited another five minutes, then turned the computer back on. About ten minutes later, I received the same error. I opened the Device Manager, and Windows 7 is apparently seeing an "Unknown Device" attached to a Generic USB hub that has nothing else attached to it.

I performed a System Restore back to last Friday, (before I started receiving this USB error). Ran Windows Update, and rebooted. Ran a full NOD32 antivirus scan, nothing. Ran a full Malwarebytes Antimalware scan, nothing.

Booted my computer up this morning, and sure enough, I received a pop up message stating that Windows 7 found a new USB device, and attempted to install a device driver for it, quickly followed by another pop up message stating that the device driver installation failed.

At this point, I'm at a bit of a loss. Any help would be appreciated. This is a fairly new (seven months old), desktop machine running Windows 7 Professional 64 bit.

It's possible one of the ports that are unused have some dust in there that's causing a short and making it think something's plugged in. Can of compressed air and a few gentle, short spritzes.

Another possibility is that one of the ports (or the device used on that port) is going bad.

Still another is that your on-board USB controller is going bad.

Still another is that one of the latest Win7 patches you've acquired has something wrong with it that's causing the false detection.

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

The trouble you may have is that USB devices pulse - some gaming mice pulse as often as 600-1200 times a second! The logitech G500 mouse refreshes 1000 times a second. What I have found is on some systems it sort of blows over either the Windows or hardware response.

Try taking a look at Control panel - administrative tools and event log. Check both system and software. Sometimes you can see something in there. You can also try updating or reinstalling your motherboard chipset drivers.