Cannot install driver for USB devices in Windows XP

This morning during the user acceptance testing of our Automation Gate Project, our vendor encountered a problem while installing the thermal printer (Zebra TTP 2130) to a Kiosk unit that has Windows XP Embedded Standard OS installed. The problem was that Windows cannot detect the appropriate driver for the printer even if we already manually specified the software driver (we are very sure that it is the correct driver). Noticeably upon plugin, other USB devices also keeps on prompting for a software driver.



So after few minutes of research and analysis, I found out that the Windows OS USB support default drivers were not installed. In short by default, Windows cannot auto install any kind of USB devices. To install the USB device support and temporarily fix the current issue (permanent solution is to reinstall the whole system), we followed this step-by-step procedure.

1. Upon device plugin the Add hardware wizard will appear. Choose "Install the hardware that I manually select from a list (Advanced)"



2. From the common hardware types list, choose Printers or the type of the USB device you want to install



3. Then on the next screen, click the Have disk button to bring up the "Install from disk". Browse to "C:\windows\inf" and locate "usbprint.inf" for printers or just click OK for other devices. This will install the USB support drivers.



4. If you installing a printer or a specific device, windows will ask for another driver and this time point it to the actual software driver included on your device installer cd.



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