Windows 10: Solution for having windows store devices without a serial number as unique devices

Here, the issue, explained: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20041110-00/?p=37343

Is there a way to "turn off" that behavior? Even better, can you turn it off on a one by one device basis, so devices you know you only need one at a time will not generate multiple ghosts?

Some utilities like GhostBuster are meant to remove such duplicates. But in my case, with complex music studio routing and virtual ports, it gets annoying real quick. If I move from the studio to mobile, my USB MIDI routings do not work because of changing ports.

submitted by /u/StizerOfficial
[link] [comments]

:)

 

Do you have a number?

Would you mind elaborate your suggestion in details?

What number are you referring to?

Why you want numbers?

Note that each Laptop and device would have unique serial numbers.

 

Assign a serial number to a device through Windows to differentiate gamepads

I installed 4 Generic USB Controllers on my computer for my nephews to play together without fighting ("Generic" as I don't have to money to buy 4 official Xbox Controllers).

All controllers work perfectly independently in their games, however because they are generic chinese electronics, they all share the same configuration and changing the config for one of the controllers in Steam will change assign the same configuration for each.

As we can see in Steam/logs/controller.txt, the devices don't have serial numbers and I suspect this is what is causing all 4 to share the same configuration. On the last line, it is assigning a serial number (79-6-6151b0), but it assigns the same to each.

I'm aware the SN might be burned in the controllers' firmware thus inaccessible but still, does anyone know if there's a way to emulate a serial number at Windows level or make it so they are unique?

 

How to wipe / fresh USB serial numbers for devices

You can go into Device Manager and select View > Show hidden devices. Delete the duplicate devices. Below is a screenshot show disks on my system. All the greyed out entries are devices that Windows remembers but that are not currently connected. Windows remembers these devices so that when they are reconnected it can configure then in the same manner that they were previously configured.