Standard Enhanced PCI to USB Host Controller Driver Error – Solved

Of late, my computer system started behaving weirdly. Whenever I plugged in a device into the USB port, my computer would advise me “This device can perform faster… Please use USB 2.0 port… blah…blah…blah“. I am currently using Windows 7 64-bit. I had recently upgraded my motherboard and was sure that I had only USB 2.0 and 3.0 ports. Moreover, I was pretty sure that I was using the USB 2.0 port to connect my device.

Well, then I went to the Device Manager (in case you didn’t know, there is a nice keyboard shortcut for that – Win + Pause(Break) key).

Within the Device Manager, all your devices in your computer are listed in a tree hierarchy. I expanded the node titled Universal Serial Bus controllers. To my surprise, I found there were several yellow icons(which indicate that the drivers are not proper for those devices).

I tried updating the driver by right-clicking and selecting Update Driver software but Windows kept assuring me that I had the latest driver for the devices.

So I searched the web, if there was anyone who was suffering the same fate. One of the sites gave a simple solution which I tried out and it worked for me!

And the solution is: Right click on the USB devices (for which there is a yellow icon attached to it) and select Uninstall. This would uninstall the driver. Now REBOOT! Upon rebooting, Windows will automatically install the drivers for them. Voila! No more USB issues.

Seems that the driver file got corrupted!

Windows 7 and Apple aluminium keyboard

Last week my brother-in-law gifted me an Apple aluminium keyboard. I am a big fan of Apple products. They design their products so elegantly.

I was initially not sure whether I will be able to use it with my PC running Windows 7 RC(build 7100). I Binged/Googled to check if someone else had already faced this scenario and had a possible solution for it. I armed myself with the drivers obtained from these sites.

When I unboxed the keyboard and held the sleek keyboard in my hand, I was at a loss of words and all I could say was “WOW!”. I could hardly believe there could exist so thin a keyboard with such a beautifully sculpted design.

With a silent prayer, I connected it to my PC and switched it on. With bated breath, I waited for the login screen to come up. When it did, slowly I pressed the first key of my password, half expecting that I would be successful…

VOILA! Windows 7, it seems, had recognized the keyboard… I was able to login successfully…

All the keys were working fine… and all this without installing a single driver! The Option key works as Alt and the Command key works as the Windows key!

The typing experience on the Apple keyboard is heavenly! It makes you feel like you could go on typing for eons…

But I still need to find a way how to map the PrintScreen option to one of the keys in the keyboard…

Kudos to Microsoft for their Windows 7 OS (which I believe is their best OS till date)…

Kudos to Apple too… for their excellent new keyboard which makes typing pure joy…