USB drivers all not working - SOLVED (darn Virtual Box)

[Idontwantspam]

I am putting this in the Windows XP forum because it's on a machine with Windows XP. If it should be moved, please let me know. All of the USB ports are out on my laptop. It is not a hardware issue, Dell Diagnostics confirms that - my USB key lights up and is fine, and the diagnostics utility says they're fine. However the device manager says that the drivers are not working - that there's a problem with the drivers. I looked into this, and apparently this is maybe part of the issue:

Driver details for all of the 5 drivers shown (there are only 4 usb ports, so this makes no sense). All the driver details show several microsoft-signed drivers and a non-signed driver in the following location:

C:/WINDOWS/System32/DRIVERS/VBoxUSBFlt.sys

I researched this driver and found that it is a USB driver for Virtual Box. I attempted to install Virtual Box on about April 2nd or 3rd. It didn't work - the computer did a BSOD on me. I don't remember the error code. So anyhow, after I rebooted following the BSOD, I went and looked and apparently nothing had been installed - there were no Virtual Box related folders in Program Files, it didn't show up in Add or Remove program files in the control panel. It appeared that nothing was done. But, there is this driver on the computer that might be part of the problem. I am fairly sure it is from Virtual Box. I have since installed MS virtual PC. I do not think it is related to that. Now since Virtual Box was never installed, I can't uninstall any components - like this rogue driver.

Other possible causes/relevant info:

I first noticed this the 4th. I hadn't used anything USB since about the 1st or March 30th about.

There have been microsoft updates since I last used USB, and they may be related. A patch for the .ani bug was released on Tuesday, out of cycle, and has reportedly broken some things elsewhere. I don't think this is related but it could be.

Here is the system info:

Type: Dell Inspiron E1505, about 4 months old

OS: GENUINE Windows XP Media Center 2005 SP2

Processor: Intel Core Duo

RAM: 1gb

Hard drive: about 60gb

4 USB connectors, none of which work

Anything else you need to know?

I have seen on other (inferior to MSFN ) boards talk of this happening. It seems to be happening mostly to Dells. Any clues what might be going on? This is a big problem for me, as I use USB devices a lot. Camera and memory key, mostly, which I use very frequently. I am considering maybe trying to install Virtual Box again, and if it works, uninstalling it to maybe remove the said driver. Any suggestions on what the heck I can do?

Here a re couple of screenshots, one of the device manager and one of the details for one of the drivers.

Edited April 6, 2007 by Idontwantspam

[Idontwantspam]

Solved!

It was, indeed, VirtualBox causing the problem. After hunting around on the Virtual Box website, I found the following info:

If VirtualBox messes up your USB stack on Windows and you can no longer work with your USB devices, try removing VBoxUSBFlt from LowerFilters of the following registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{36FC9E60-C465-11CF-8056-444553540000}. At this time, we do not know what causes this problem and we have only had very few reports so this is just in case.

Well, here's another case for them, then

I'm not sure why this happened. It seems it was the issue with it not installing right. Now the issue is fixed, yay!

If anyone else has an issue like this, I recommend you visit this webpage:

http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/User_FAQ

I'm glad I solved this, sorry for wasting anyone's time. Hopefully this will be useful to someone else some day!