USB composite device

[laptox]

Hi I recently reinstalled XP on computer - whenever I plug in a usb device - it installs a composite device before installing the driver - what is a USB composite device ? - and having installed XP dozens of times - why is this install behaving like this ?

 

[Edward Catflap]

Mm... should be completely normal.

I did a bit of research and apparently a USB composite device is "any USB device that has more than one interface or does more than one job - for example a combined keyboard and mouse". From experience though, XP installs USB devices as a "composite device" first before searching for the specific driver and installing to match that device. (if the driver isn't present, it either installs as a generic composite device or errors)

After it installs your "USB composite device", it would (as you said before) install the device driver. I assume it works okay after that?

 

[laptox]

Yes it all works fine - it just seemed to take ages - kept popping up with this composite device message - I was just curious to what it was and why it was happening.

 

[Edward Catflap]

Yeah, sounds about right. XP was always a bit of a fiddler when it came to plug-and-play... sadly, as far as I know there's no way to speed up the process