Force Vista to "forget" a USB device

What worked for me in the end was (massive pain in the arse and mildly scary) deleting the registry keys, for the device, uninstalling the driver, re-connecting the device and then I finally got the wizard that gave me the option to select a specific driver.

What worked for me in the end was (massive pain in the arse and mildly scary) deleting the registry keys, for the device, uninstalling the driver, re-connecting the device and then I finally got the wizard that gave me the option to select a specific driver.

"Bit of a blunt instrument approach and I've only ever done this on XP, but the concepts should apply to Vista:

Open Device Manager
Go to your USB controllers
delete each entry under USB controllers
click `""Action \ Scan for Hardware Changes""`

Based on the assumption that you've already uninstalled the driver Windows should consider the device to be completely new when you click ""Action \ Scan for Hardware Changes""

Note this will also cause all other USB devices attached to your computer to be forgotten - so be careful when using USB keyboard / mouse (you may want to use a PS2 adapter to connect them whilst doing this).

If you can identify exactly which device in the list under USB Controllers is your phone, you can get away with just deleting that one."

The problem you may encounter is that the manufacturer of the device has to provide the information that the device comes with its own driver in its handshake to Windows. Otherwise, it will use the Windows generic driver. The details of the procedure are given in Microsoft's USB pages for device manufacturers.

"From addictivetips - How To Disable Automatic Driver Installation in Windows Vista:

Go to Start menu, right-click on
Computers and click Properties. On the
left sidebar of the System dialog box,
select Advanced System Settings. Now
navigate to Hardware tab and click
Windows Update Driver
Settings...select Ask me each time I
connect a new device before checking
for drivers or Never check for drivers
when I connect a device

But since you've already installed drivers with the automatic method you might need to manually delete the drivers from the Store to prevent Vista from automatically using them next time you plug in. Quoting from a post at vistaforums:

open an elevated command prompt window
(enter cmd in the start area, then
press ctrl-shift-enter) and enter
pnputil.exe -e. This will provide a
list of all the third-party drivers
installed.

Search the list for the driver version
you want removed. It will be
oem##.inf. (where ## is the actual
two-digit number of the inf file)

To remove that driver, using the same
elevated command window, enter
pnputil.exe -d oem##.inf to be safe,
find all the driver files and remove
them all.

Then, you need to clean out the INF
directory:


open %windir%\inf\setupapi.dev.log in
Wordpad
search for [the name of the device], this will be found on
a DevDesc line
look a few lines up for the inf:
line. It will say Opened INF: and
at the end of the line, you will see
the actual name of the inf file.
remove that file from the INF
directory.
look for
ServiceBinary=c:\Windows\system32\DRIVERS
containing a reference to the same
inf file. That's the driver file to
delete.
continue this process, search for
all the inf sequences and DRIVERS
references, removing the files from
the INF and DRIVERS directories as
needed.


I've tested neither of these personally."