USB 2.0 Controller Unknown Device

Spursy · Post by **Spursy** » 20. Jul 2017, 06:16

I'm new to VM and just installed VirtualBox in my Windows 7 Prof Notebook. After created a Windows 2000 Prof VM, I checked USB 2.0 in the USB devices box, there is an unknown USB controller icon appearing in the device manager. I installed Unknwon Device Identifer and found it to be an Intel 82801FB USB 2.0 Host Controller. Any idea how to get the "USB 2 to work? I installed the extension pack already but still not working and can't find this driver anywhere.

Thanks in advance.

Post by **socratis** » 20. Jul 2017, 06:47

Spursy wrote:I checked USB 2.0 in the USB devices box

What "devices box" are you exactly refer to? If you're not talking about enabling the USB 2.0 controller in the VM settings, please clarify, even with a screenshot if necessary.

Spursy wrote:I installed Unknwon Device Identifer and found it to be an Intel 82801FB USB 2.0 Host Controller.

Where do you see that, in the Win2K guest? Again, please clarify accordingly. And what exactly do you mean by "I installed...". What did you install, where from and why?

Spursy · Post by **Spursy** » 20. Jul 2017, 10:18

: Steps_1_Page_1.jpg (99.95 KiB) Viewed 4975 times

: Steps_1_Page_2.jpg (67.48 KiB) Viewed 4975 times

I've uploaded the attached steps which should give you a clear picture of what I meant. Hopefully you can help to resolve. Thanks in advance.

Post by **mpack** » 20. Jul 2017, 10:36

All of these various "unknowns" are because you haven't installed relevant drivers in the guest.

This has nothing to do with being in a VM. If you installed Windows 2000 on a PC - and then added an EHCI (USB2) card in a PCI slot, then the Win2K device list would show exactly the same thing.

An OS - particularly an almost 20 year old OS such as Win2k - needs drivers for the controller plus app level drivers for every device.

From XP SP1 and later (from 2002) you could expect the OS to have generic app level drivers for common USB2 controllers and device classes. For Win2k these technologies were still in their infancy, in fact I'm not sure that USB2 even existed (Wikipedia says that the spec was issued in April 2000, which would be too late for Win2k).

In much the same vein: USB3 support was only added to Windows in v8.0. So, Win7 and earlier native drivers would not recognize a USB3/xHCI controller if you installed one.

There will be loads of things in Win2k which will be wildly obsolete. Internet browsing for example.

Spursy · Post by **Spursy** » 21. Jul 2017, 09:27

Thanks for the clear explaination. I guess there no way to get USB 2.0 to work in the Win2000 environment then..

Post by **mpack** » 21. Jul 2017, 09:30

I didn't say that. I only said that Win2k has no native support for USB2 (EHCI) controllers, nor for USB2 devices.

I.e. you need to find Win2k eHCI drivers, probably from Intel. Then you'll need drivers for the device you want to use. It's possible that e.g. generic mass storage drivers are available from somewhere - someone even did that for Win98.

p.s. This seems to be the download link for the controller driver, but I have not tried it: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/downlo ... USB20-EXE-

Post by **socratis** » 21. Jul 2017, 09:53

I honestly don't remember having to install any special drivers for Win2K in order to support USB 2.0. A quick search seems to confirm that support for USB2 was added in SP4.

Furthermore, I do have a Win2K client and the "Intel 82801FB USB 2.0 Host Controller" is nowhere to be found, yet I do have full and complete USB2 support. I honestly don't know where that controller came from...

Post by **mpack** » 21. Jul 2017, 10:08

SP4 would have been after Win2k went off retail (XP had arrived), so it shouldn't be on any official setup CD. I can't remember that any manufacturer had a special fondness for Win2k either, so I'd be surprised if any OEM prepared a Win2k setup CD with SP4 on it.

Win2k may have been available on MSDN for longer.

Are you sure you have EHCI support in that guest? Or is the guest just falling back on USB1.1 (AHCI) backwards compatibility?

Post by **socratis** » 21. Jul 2017, 10:15

OK, mystery solved. You did not enable USB2, you enabled USB3. The behavior inside the Win2K guest is consistent with having USB3 enabled in the VM. I do not know for sure why you show only USB2 enabled in the VM settings, but if you're on Win2K SP4, then USB2 should be available with no extra steps required.

mpack, you can always update to SP4. Microsoft in their supreme wisdom removed all publicly available URLs, but you can still get it from a plethora of reputable websites, including archive.org.

Post by **mpack** » 21. Jul 2017, 16:40

socratis wrote: mpack, you can always update to SP4. Microsoft in their supreme wisdom removed all publicly available URLs, but you can still get it from a plethora of reputable websites, including archive.org.

Thanks. If I ever create a Win2K VM I'll bear that in mind. Currently I don't have any installers at all for Win2K.

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