USB Midi Controllers Not Working On Windows 8.1 (SOLVED!) [Windows Update]

Anonymous
2013-12-13T08:10:58+00:00

Hello, I have a problem (see subject above).

I have been trying to fix it on my own but nothing seems to work.

I have never had this issue before and I have been Producing music since XP.

On Windows 8 my midi controllers worked just fine. As soon as I updated via windows store, My controllers have become unresponsive.

I have checked (And updated!) under device manager all of the Universal Serial Bus Drivers.

Everything seems to be working fine there, except when running any DAW (digital audio workstation) such as: FL Studio, Cubase, Pro Tools, Ableton, Ripper, Studio One, Reason.

The midi controllers show up as available but do not send or receive any midi messages.

Both my external Audio Interfaces work as far as Outputting sound in both Directwave and ASIO.

But midi does not.

PLEASE HELP, I do not EVER wanna be a MAC fanboy... but this Windows 8.1 update is pushing me away.

No Midi Controllers = No New music from me = Shopping around for a new system pretty soon :(

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Devices and drivers

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Anonymous
2014-08-12T22:40:13+00:00

Description of the issue:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/usbcoreblog/archive/2014/01/21/windows-8-1-usb-midi-device-works-on-usb-2-0-port-doesn-t-work-on-usb-3-0-port.aspx?CommentPosted=true#commentmessage

Fix for this issue is in August update released this morning.  Please install update.  With this fix, you don't have to apply the registry setting to workaround the problem.

www.microsoft.com/.../details.aspx for x86 systems.

www.microsoft.com/.../details.aspx for x64 systems.

-Eliyas

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Anonymous
2014-01-10T02:17:10+00:00

We were able to repro the issue with TEXTECH INTERNATIONAL LTD. (USB\VID_15CA&PID_0101 ) MIDI device. This device works when connected to 2.0 but not on 3.0 port. We debugged the issue and found the regression.

The 3.0 host controller driver in Windows 8.1 is forwarding a MSOS descriptor query to the device and that some how causes the device to get confused. The interesting part is that the even though the device is not fully functional, it doesn't fail any I/O. So from looking at the bus trace, every thing looks good. It is this one query that is sent during initialization causes the device to sulk, and then it never internally recovers.

Windows 8 doesn't send this query.

Another thing to note is that this issue manifest only for composite devices.

Fortunately there is a registry override to inform the core USB stack to not send this query. So I request you to apply the registry setting for now to workaround the issue.  We will try to get this fix added to a future update and roll it out widely. 

Get the VID/PID/REV ID of the device from the device manager. For example, for the device I'm using the VID/PID/REV values are 15CA/0101/F110.  With that, create the following registry entry (this registry key might have been already created in some case) and set the "osvc" value to 00 00.

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\usbflags\15CA0101F110\

    REG_BINARY “osvc” = 00 00

Unplug and replug the device.

Let me know the results.

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  1. Anonymous
    2014-01-09T06:33:09+00:00

    Neither USB 2.0 or USB 3.0 ports work with Midi Controllers...

    I can plug in GPS units, Flash drives, Cell Phones, Video Game Controllers, Optical Mouse... all of these items work on both 2.0 and 3.0 ports.

    So my thinking is that, it is an Issue with Windows Midi Mapper Driver in this version Windows 8.1 (?)

    Regards.

    Donmecz

    (Original Poster)

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-01-09T00:43:42+00:00

    This thread has circled back to me as an USB issue for investigation. This is a long thread and I don't want to parse every response to find out what I'm looking for. So could you please be kind to me and tell me whether this issue is seen only when the device is connected to USB 3.0 port or it happens on both 2.0 and 3.0 port?

    The person who reproduced issue here in Microsoft says that the device doesn't work only on 3.0 port. It works fine on 2.0 port.

    Thanks,

    Eliyas

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-01-08T21:51:33+00:00

    Thank you very much Kate Werner :)

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