Recovering from USB device driver is still in memory / USB Composite Device has error (Code 38)

Something you don’t often think about is how many devices you plug into your computer …….. until you plug-in a device and it doesn’t show up or interact as expected. This post details how I recovered from such a situation so I can find it next time, and hopefully it also helps others recover quickly, rather than the numerous dead-ends I went through to fix the problem.

My Situation

I’ve been evaluating a number of different YubiKey’s recently and out of the blue they stopped being recognised. Below is a message from the YubiKey Manager indicating that there is no device inserted (when in actual fact there is).

To prove the point, plugging in two YubiKey’s informs me I should only have one at a time.

Going into Device Manager and selecting Show hidden devices reveals the plethora of USB devices I’ve previously inserted into my computer.

Looking into the USB Composite Device‘s with the warning symbols reveals

Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware because a previous instance of the device driver is still in memory. (Code 38)

The Fix

After trying numerous different avenues, this is how I repaired the issue and got up and running again.

Navigate to Windows => Settings => Update and Security => Troubleshoot => Run the troubleshooter

The troubleshooter will detect the USB Composite Device has error for the devices being problematic. Select one and continue.

Select Apply this fix

Repeat for other USB Composite Device has error errors. Then Restart the computer.

After Restart you should be back in action like I was.

Hope this helps someone else, and will help me find it next time too.