In the grand scheme of things, Windows 7 is a lot easier to use than earlier versions of the operating system. One area in which users have gotten the most improvement is in adding devices. Back in the day, adding a new hardware device to Windows involved adding hardware drivers, restarting and praying that your device could be seen. Today, the operation is much smoother and typically doesn’t require driver installation for most devices.

Sometimes Windows Doesn’t See The Hardware Device

The improvements have been so good that it’s almost surprising today to plug in certain devices and have Windows NOT see them. One area in which users experience consistent problems, however, is with USB devices. The USB standard has undergone some changes, and more changes are on the way, but USB connections have proven to be extremely popular with users, in part because the devices are portable, reliable and they’re easy to connect.

So what happens when you plug in a USB device and Windows doesn’t see it? What are your options for correcting the problem?

USB connections are good, but they’re not foolproof. USB hubs, for example, are quite popular with users, primarily because the number of USB devices has virtually exploded, but the number of USB ports on a computer still hovers around 2 or 3! Once you plug in a USB keyboard and a USB mouse, you’re not left with a lot of extra space for your iPod, digital camera, USB printer or other devices you may want to use. Enter the USB hub. The hub allows your USB devices to share a single USB port. That’s the good part. The bad part is that USB hubs don’t often pass along all of the information Windows needs to detect a USB device properly.

If you plug in a USB device into a hub, rather than into the computer directly, and Windows can’t see it, try plugging your device directly into the USB port on the computer to see if you get better “visibility.” If so, you know that there’s a communications issue between your device, your USB hub and Windows. There may not be a neat solution to this one, other than using an available USB port on your computer.

You can also try to get the Device Manager to give you a hand by uninstalling the USB host controller. (Start > Properties>Device Manager>USB Controllers – Uninstall) Sounds dangerous, but it’s not. Once you’ve uninstalled the USB host controller, restart your computer. Windows will re-install the controller on startup and if all goes well, your devices should now be able to communicate with Windows. If it doesn’t and your hub came with a driver disc, re-install the hardware driver from the disc and you should be back in business.

Photo Credit: okubax, via Flickr

Jungo will introduce WinDriver a multi-OS driver development toolkit at the 2011 Embedded World 2011 conference in Nuremburg, Germany March 1-3, 2011. The WinDriver platform is used primarily by Windows driver developers, but it can be used to develop hardware drivers for other operating systems as well.

Lastest Version Is Versatile

The newest version of WinDriver is 10.3.0 and is exceptionally stable, according to Jungo. The hardware driver development kit is used to create optimized custom drivers for computer hardware and is considered to be device independent. WinDriver offers driver development support for USB, PCI, PCI Express, CardBus, CompactPCI, ISA, PMC, PCI-X, PCI-104 and PCMCIA devices, and is used my many major manufacturers to develop hardware drivers for their peripheral devices.

Jungo guarantees that Windows hardware drivers developed on WinDriver are fully Windows Hardware Labs Quality-compliant and ready for testing. Jungo also offers hardware driver testing and submission services that can save manufacturers time and money.
Having a quality assurance process for Windows drivers is important, especially in the era of the Windows signed driver. Being able to get updated Windows hardware drivers to market is also important for maintaining customer satisfaction.

Microsoft users have consistently rated the availability of Windows hardware drivers to be among their most important adoption considerations, since hardware driver management is among the most time-consuming of user maintenance tasks. The reliable availability of drivers is also a significant user experience issue.

For reliable driver management, consider Driver Detective. Driver Detective will monitor, download, install and verify the operation of a computer’s hardware drivers. Driver Detective will also maintain a backup copy of each installed driver. In the event that something happens to the driver, it becomes corrupted or accidentally deleted, Driver Detective will reinstall the correct driver.

Using a driver management program like Driver Detective is a great way to avoid problems with hardware drivers, and to ensure that a computer is updated with the latest hardware drivers at all times. Driver Detective takes the work out of maintaining hardware drivers and works with any version of the Windows operating system.

With Windows 7, there’s more to driver management than just having signed drivers. Driver Detective will help you keep your computer up-to-date and avoid problems that may arise from using out-of-date drivers. It will also recognize corrupted drivers, so you don’t spend a lot of time trying to troubleshoot a problem. Download your copy of Driver Detective today!

If the name JooJoo doesn’t ring a bell, that’s not a surprise. JooJoo is an iPad-like tablet that’s designed strictly for Internet usage. It doesn’t run any of the commercially available operating systems, thus needs no hardware drivers but provides the user with access to Internet applications like Web browsers, Twitter, Facebook and the rest of the “usual suspects.”

Third Party Drivers May Someday Be “Supported”

The JooJoo tablet is a touchscreen device with iPad-esque styling, size and shape. It retails for about USD$500 and has just a single accessory… a stand that enables the pad to stand on a desktop. The JooJoo site is shockingly sparse on details, and contains only the barest information about the company, the product and the product’s capabilities.

Nonetheless, at least one enterprising user has posted a driver that enables the JooJoo to run Windows 7. The hacked Windows 7 driver doesn’t engage all of the JooJoo’s functions but gets most of them and in surprisingly good fashion. One of the big features that’s left wanting is the JooJoo’s accelerometer. The accelerometer is the component that enables these devices to reposition the screen when its orientation is changed, and to incorporate device motion as a command or data input. In other words, if you shake this device, it won’t do anything, and probably can’t calculate your carbon footprint if you take it for a ride in your Prius.

The origin of the driver presents an interesting alternative, however, for Windows users whose hardware isn’t supported by the hardware manufacturer. Some hardware is simply worth having, even when the manufacturer of the device doesn’t think so.

I suspect that, in at least some cases, we’ll see consumer demand for Windows device drivers for abandoned or orphaned products. That also opens the question of whether or not manufacturers that no longer want to support a particular device will support volunteer programmers (a la open source) who are willing to invest their time and talents to create a guerilla driver for an orphaned device. The support might include device information that the manufacturer has, work that it started and abandoned and/or code for the existing drivers.

Even if the original manufacturer isn’t willing to create a driver update, consumer demand may be steady enough to warrant the creation of a driver by a third-party. Sometimes (as demonstrated by the JooJoo hack), third parties will develop the driver anyway.

Photo Credit: José Goulão, via Flickr

If you’ve purchased an Energizer Duo USB battery charger and downloaded the software that Energizer provides to monitor charging status on your PC, you may have a little mess to clean up. The Windows driver that comes as part of the kit contains a Trojan.

Root Kit Distributed As Part Of Driver Software

The troublesome file is called “Arucer.dll” and opens a backdoor that enables nefarious users to access an infected PC remotely. The vulnerability was described in Vulnerability Note VU#154421 about Arucer issued by CERT.

The Trojan happily adds itself to the computer’s startup routine, so the Trojan is activated each time the computer boots. The Trojan then accepts remote commands to send files from the computer, accept new files from the remote connection, download other applications to the infected computer or execute files as directed by the remote user.

Unlike other rootkits and Trojans, the infected computer doesn’t “phone home” to acknowledge that it’s ready to accept commands. That makes the source of the Trojan harder to trace, and it also makes the computer vulnerable to any hacker who discovers the back door. The infected computer can be used by multiple hackers for whatever they need. For the most part, the infection is not detected by anti-virus software.

Unfortunately for users, the Trojan has been distributed undetected since 2007 and is embedded in the battery monitoring software. The first step toward ridding an infected computer of the malicious software is to uninstall the charge-monitoring application. Once the application is uninstalled, reboot the computer and delete the Arucer.dll file. Do not reinstall the battery monitoring software, since this will re-install the rootkit .dll file from the Windows32 System directory. Energizer has removed the Duo battery charger from the market and removed the Web site where users could download the infected software.

If your computer is infected by the Arucer.dll backdoor, you may have other malware infections you need to address. Once the rootkit has been removed, rescan and clean the computer to detect other potential infections. For networked computers, network technicians can block port 7777, which the software uses to listen for remote instructions.

Currently, Energizer has not indicated its plans in terms of replacing the infected software with a clean copy, but security experts say that all distributions of the companion software for the Energizer Duo USB battery charger are affected.

Photo Credit: Andreas Brandmaier, via Flickr