Repair Your USB Driver Problems

After a USB device is "safely removed"/un-installed Windows hides the drivers. These hidden drivers may cause conflicts with other USB devices when they are installed.
This will makes all hidden drivers visible and available for removal.

(Preferably use a PS2 mouse and keyboard, then you can delete all the USB devices!!)

After going through this procedure you may need to reinstall some or all of your USB device drivers!!

Start by downloading the Take Ownership in Context.reg file: www.mediafire.com/?mcjxe2k2t8j6brt and merge it into your registry. You will need to use it later.

• Unplug all USB devices except the essential mouse and keyboard.
  
• GoTo Start Menu, right-click Computer and select Properties. In the left panel click on Advanced system settings. Under the Advanced tab, click on the Environment Variables button.

• Below the System variables window, click on New.

• Enter devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices as the Variable name and enter 1 as the Variable value.

• OK your way out.

• Now GoTo Start Menu, in the Search or a Run… window type devmgmt.msc and then press Enter.
  
• When Device Manager is open, on the Menu bar select View, and then Show hidden devices.

• Under the Universal Serial Bus controllers sub-header you will now see a list of all the USB devices that are (in bold), or have been (faded), installed. You need to uninstall all of the old (faded) entries.

The INFCACHE.1 file is used to store information about USB drivers, this information may have become corrupted. This may cause windows to load the wrong driver or generate a driver not found error message.

Deleting this file will force Windows to generate a new INFCACHE.1 file.

• GoTo your C:\Windows\System32\Driver Store folder and locate the INFCACHE.1 file, you'll need to right-click it and use the Take Ownership in the context menu. You can now delete it.
  
• Connect a known good USB device. This will create a new INFCACHE.1 file
  
• Now Start the PC and try your problematic device again.

Hopefully your USB problems will now be resolved but it may be necessary to run through this clean up routine more than once.[/size]

Originally posted August 2010: elmer-befuddled.blogspot.com/2010/08/icon-sizes-in-windows-7.html