Bill in Co wrote:
Paul wrote:
Bill in Co wrote:
First, a special callout to Paul for providing me some more info on the
USB hubs.

This is what started all of this investigation on the USB ports:

What happened was I had something plugged into a USB port and this error
message came up. However, I know the USB ports are power protected by
design, so this shouldn't really be a hardware problem.

So what I did was uninstall ALL the USB Host Controllers and reboot the
system to let it reinstall all of them again, but the problem still
persists. (At one point in this process after rebooting, it came up with
a warning advising to reset the port, which I did, but the problem still
exists - the port is "dead".

I've researched this online and haven't found any other suggestions, but
still find it hard to believe the hardware (USB port) is truly damaged.
So if uninstalling all the USB Host Controllers so they can be rese
can't wake up the USB port, I don't know what will. Somehow it is not
getting reset - not getting the message.

Is there a chance that reinstalling SP3 could force a port reset during
the install process? Or is there anything else I can try?
You can delete the ENUM key in the CurrentControlSet
and let the OS rediscover all the hardware.

I even tried this on a Win10 install and it worked.

Take a backup first. I did.

*******

If you're out of ideas for registry editors, the
Kaspersky rescue CDs about a year ago, had a registry
editor in addition to the normal offline scan functions.
(The registry editor was released open source
as well, so may be available elsewhere.)
Current ISO downloads may not be as fully functional
as they once were. I had some trouble with the last
attempt, but don't recollect all the details.

If you keep the older KAV ISOs and didn't toss them away,
you may have material you can use.

Paul

Great idea, thanks! But ... Using regedit, I tried deleting the ENUM key,
and it won't let me "cannot delete Enum: Error while deleting key."
Probably due to the fact it's in use, and being protected. Is there any
way to get around this? BTW, there are several ENUM keys, but the ones I
was most interested in deleting were in HKEY_LOCAL-MACHINE and
HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG. Perhaps in safe mode? But I'm not sure that would
work either.

I restored the registry just in case (using ERUNT), and I'm back to square
one. Maybe I should try safe mode to do it?

My notes that I keep, are always cryptic.

https://s9.postimg.cc/vwioz43f3/WIN10_delete_ENUM.gif

psexec -hsi cmd === 32 bit OS, opens SYSTEM cmd.exe window
psexec64 -hsi cmd === 64 bit OS, opens SYSTEM cmd.exe window

reg delete HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum /f

This is the OS discovering hardware later.

https://s9.postimg.cc/q8ce88ei7/WIN10_discovers_HW.gif

That suggests the key can be removed with the SYSTEM account.

Paul