Vista - "Unknown USB device" without any device plugged

Greetings,

I'm running Home Premium 64 on a Sony Vaio Laptop (CS170F). I'm having a curious problem: Yesterday I plugged into the machine the dongle of my wireless logitech mouse, and for some reason the machine said "Your unknown device is ready to use" (my OS is in spanish, the messages may not be accurately translated). Since then, an annoying message pops every few seconds warning about an "unrecognized USB device", that "didn't work as expected". The best part is this, if I click on the tray icon, sometimes the informative dialog window is emply, an other times shows all the USB ports in the system plus one extra with a "unknown UBS device", even without any device plugged into the system. I've tryed removing the unknown device from the device manager, but it shows up again.

I'll really appreciate any pointer, link or suggestion.

Thanks in advance, and best regards.
Antonio.

Hi antonio and Welcome to the forums.
Connect the wireless dongle and then update windows to see if there's any generic driver available from Microsoft.

I would uninstall all the usb ports, restart and let Vista sorted it out again.

On the very first place, thank you guys for your answers. Unfortunately, neither advice worked. Now, I don't see any unknown device in the device manager list, but the annoying popup keeps coming and coming and the informative dialog window shows an empty list.

Maybe it's worth to mention:
1) that the wireless mouse was working properly before the problem arised,
2) now it's useless when connected to (any of) the laptop's built-in usb ports
3) it works fine when connected to a usb mini-hub (I was able to use the mouse with or without the usb mini-hub).

Is there a way to reset the device list?

[...20 more popups and I will reformat the machine... ]

Thank you again.
Best regards,
Antonio.

hi antoniovl i am new to vista 64bit but have you got logitech setpoint installed ddoing so might help

It seems to be solved. Not a very technical solution, but removing the battery allowed the machine to recongize the unknown device, who turned out to be the built in camera (who was working fine, at least it did a couple of weeks ago).

Still trying to figure out if the problem was really related to the mouse.

Thank you very much, and best regards.
Antonio.

Antonio, how exactly did you uninstall the USB ports? I have had that issue many a times and what I told you to do works for me every time.

I am not saying that you didn't wrong, just wondering what you did.

Antonio, your advise saved my day! I spent the whole night trying to figure out what the hell was going on with my Sony Vaio... The last thing I did was unplug a mp4 device without doing the "Remove hardware safely" procedure. My bad, I know, but since then, the computer kept saying "Unknown device detected" or "A device is not working properly", etc.. My mouse was dead, no matter which USB port I connected it to.

I tried a lot of things, also a system restore. But I started suspecting it was a hardware-related issue when I plugged the MP4 device again and Windows could read it without any problems. So I came up with your post. I turned off the comp, went to take a bath, and when I came back an connected everything, voila! The "unknown device detected" messege didn't appear and when I connected the mouse it worked like a charm!

Thanks for your "not-so-technical" solution, but in the end it was what saved my day.

PS: I registered to this site just to post this note and say thanks!
Regards from Buenos Aires.
Alekz