Coloured USB cables

[dhicks]

Hello All,

 

The music department plans to get some snazzy USB music keyboards to use with our snazzy new media suite PCs. These are USB devices that act as MIDI controllers. We aim to get 10 of these keyboards, moveable around the room from lesson to lesson. A problem that I can foresee is that every time a user plugs a keyboard in to the PC, Windows XP is going to want to install a new driver. If we have decent security restrictions set up as we should do, Windows XP isn't going to let ordinary users install new drivers. The only way to avoid this happening is to keep a particular USB keyboard plugged in to a particular USB port, or simply go around and plug each keyboard into each port.

 

For the match-keyboard-with-computer option, does anyone happen to know anywhere that sells a "rainbow pack" of USB cables so we can colour code the machines that take a particular keyboard? 10 separate colours would be nice.

 

--

David Hicks

[plexer]

plus the usb cable into the pc and then cable tie or secure it by other means to the pc this will mean it will stay plugged in to the correct port.

 

They then just unplug the lead from the keyboard end.

 

Ben

[SYNACK]

If it has a fully signed driver then you may be able to just put the driver in the \inf folder and install it once as an admin to allow all users to use it.

 

Short of that you can plug and unplug it to every different usb port while you are logged in as administrator to get it to install the driver class for each port. This will allow them to plug it into any port as a limited user and still use it but it is a bit of a hassle doing it this way.

[dhicks]

plus the usb cable into the pc and then cable tie or secure it by other means to the pc this will mean it will stay plugged in to the correct port. They then just unplug the lead from the keyboard end.

 

Thought about it, but it makes our new all-in-one PCs look a tad scruffy and they can still get the keyboards mixed up.

 

--

David Hicks

[dhicks]

If it has a fully signed driver then you may be able to just put the driver in the \inf folder and install it once as an admin to allow all users to use it.

 

Ah, yes, "if"...

 

Short of that you can plug and unplug it to every different usb port while you are logged in as administrator to get it to install the driver class for each port. This will allow them to plug it into any port as a limited user and still use it but it is a bit of a hassle doing it this way.

 

To be honest, this might well end up being the simplest option - it only has to be done once, it'll take around an hour if we just get on with it, I can simply get another image of the machines afterwards and it'll solve any which-keyboard-with-which-machine problems for evermore.

 

--

David Hicks