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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141 additional answers

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  1. Anonymous
    2016-01-16T03:40:07+00:00

    If anyone is still reading this thread, I had the same or similar issue with my midi controller in both Windows 7 and Windows 10..

    Basically the driver was fine in device manager (Generic USB audio), but am unable to communicate with any software via the midi controller. Tried both usb 2 and usb 3 ports, neither worked.

    So I found the post with the registry fix, or workaround, and it did work, but it had side effects. Namely, setting a key named osvc and setting it to 00 00 did work fine, all of a sudden my DAW for example was picking up the controller and I was playing midi notes in it no problems. But the issue was that this registry change does more than just fix this problem, it also caused either my soundcard to have a samplerate set to 0.0KHz, or data was being misreported to the DAW. Either way, it added error messages in my DAW that weren't there before, and removing the registry key mentioned above and rebooting got rid of these errors. It is a concern if in fact the audio interface (soundcard) was having its samplerate set to 0.0KHz, as this is outside of its possible values (mine ranges from 44.1KHz to 192KHz), and this could have disastrous effects.

    So whilst the registry fix mentioned does "work", I have to say it may do things to your setup or even your hardware that you do not want to have happen.

    Long and short though is that it shows that this issue is a Windows and/or windows class compliant driver issue, and given that I have had this issue now on 3 computers, since Windows 7, then it is pretty poor that microsoft, in 8 or 9 years have not ever fixed this.

    PS - look at page 9 or 10 of this thread, to find the registry editing instructions I mentioned.. and like I said, for me it worked, but did other things to my setup that in my opinion were not good at all, though your mileage may vary..

    The suggestions that I think are the best solution are also around page 9 or 10 regarding the Midi to USB converters, that come with their own drivers, as it seems the core of this issue is in the class compliant "Generic USB audio" drivers.

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  2. Anonymous
    2016-07-31T15:40:54+00:00

    I never hated anything in my life, but there's always a first for everything, and I hate microsoft windows anything, and any brand that uses windows in their towers. I have had nothing but problems with my PC, and I only use it for one thing, and that's my music apps, and equipment. The only thing I ever go online for are updates for the computer, and my music apps, that's it. Now when I power up my PC, it's takes an hour or so for the internet to properly work, I don't understand. I update all the windows updates, drivers, whatever, always check device manager, & somehow I always manage to get screwed by microsoft one way or another. I also have three Mac computers, one I bought in 2007, and still to this very day, I use it no problem at all, and it's still on OS snow leopard. Every PC I ever had with the best antivirus, and maintenance software all crashed and burned, I guess PC's are rigged up to die, so we eventually have to get ripped off for our money again. I hate you microsoft!!!!!! FuckYouComingFromTheFuckyouMan!!!!!!!!! & then you want to charge for technical support after ripping us all off with windows 8 everything, mighty white of you all!!!!! Then when I call for help, you want to charge me just to fix my drivers or whatever the problem I never should have had in the first place. THanks for wasting a ton of my time!!!!!!!!

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-07-31T15:45:32+00:00

    when I call apple, they never charge me, even without the 3 year tech support purchase, and they fix my problem first time asked, you know why? Because they can see I have been a great customer, and they want to keep me, I can;t say that for microsoft, nothing but bad experiences, I just wasted my whole day yesterday trying to solve this PC problem, everyone please excuse my language, microsoft pushed my buttons to hard with this. I promise to never buy a PC again in my life, unless microsoft fixes this one, the 12th PC I have bought, and the only 1 that is barely hanging on and kind of working.

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