Windows 7 and anything USB related....

[RTFM]

Hi all,

 

we have a very frustrating problem which i'd love to get an answer for before our Summer roll out of Windows 7 across the entire site.

 

Currently we have a lot of student laptops and a media suite with windows 7 64 bit but when you plug in any sort of USB device into them (SD card readers, USB pens, cameras etc) it can take an age to appear in my computer as a usable device.

 

It can sit for 20-30minutes sometimes at 'installing driver' and frankly is unusable.

 

We have plug and play disabled in our group policy, i know its a long shot but would that have an effect?

 

Whenever you google the words 'windows 7' and 'usb' most of what you find is 'installing windows 7 from a usb' which obviously isnt what i am after.

 

Has anyone else had these problems, resolved them, has any solutions etc etc?

 

Thanks a lot for any advice which could be offered.

 

[newpersn]

it looks online for "up to date" drivers. Try disabling it in systems settigns

[3s-gtech]

Yup, it's Windows 7 checking Windows update for drivers. It'll do this with most things, even if the drivers are built in, as it'll look for any newer ones. It's slow, but it's also superb - I've had it manage to find the most obscure, out-of-date stuff and get it working no problems. You should be able to disable this via GP though, in the Windows Update Computer Configuration.

[RTFM]

On the local machine is this in system, hardware, device installation settings?

 

The question says;

 

"Do you want to download driver software and realistic icons for your devices?"

 

Currently this is set to 'yes (recommended)'.

 

I assume turning this to 'no' with the option 'never install driver software from windows update' is the way to solve the issue?

 

 

If this is the right thing then i'll hunt for it in GP. Whilst it is useful i dont think having 700 clients all doing it is going to be realistic as on some USB pens it can take an absolute age to find the updated driver, etc.

 

Some testing may be in order!

[RTFM]

Thanks a lot,

 

For anyone else with this problem, the GP path is below;

 

Disable Searching Windows Update for Device Drivers

 

Thanks a lot

[RTFM]

Even after making the above changes i've just watched it take 10minutes to install a standard USB keyboard.....nothing fancy, just a normal keyboard.....

 

that can't be right?

 

any further potential ideas?

[AngryTechnician]

Might be worth monitoring a machine with Procmon and/or Wireshark to try and determine what its accessing while searching for drivers.

[Steve21]

I'd suggest you try restarting as a clean boot (selective startup, with only system services in msconfig) as a lot of the time it could be issues with conflcits.

 

Also out of curiosity do these computers have some kind of bluetooth/drives installled?

 

Steve

[RTFM]

Thanks all,

 

Going to try a machine off the domain on Monday and see what happens. Also going to have a play with users from different ou's to see if it is a group policy issue or not.

 

The pc's don't have Bluetooth but the laptops do and we have issues with both. This is what is pointing me to a group policy issue as the problem is across all users on all machines. Even domain admins who have very minimal policies applied to them.....

 

Will let you all know my results after my testing Monday / Tuesday.

 

Thanks for all the suggestions!!

[RTFM]

SORTED!

 

A while ago we had conficker so we turned our AV on to scan all touched files. We've now turned this to scan only executed files and the problem is solved.

 

I assume that when the driver files are being scanned through to find a compatible one, every driver is 'touched' to see if it is right, this could be hundreds / thousands of files and our AV was scanning every single one, slowing the whole process down.

 

So, yeah, sorted, not a group policy issue at all.

 

Thanks all for your suggestions and help, it's much appreciated.

[Ric_]

A while ago we had conficker so we turned our AV on to scan all touched files. We've now turned this to scan only executed files and the problem is solved.

 

Are you computers surprisingly more spritely too?

[RTFM]

Are you computers surprisingly more spritely too?

 

I'd have thought so, though as always, no-one has said anything (they never do if things get better / run normally, only when it doesnt).