Multiple HID / Keyboard / Mice in Device Manager?

[A r i n]

I'm not sure if this actually a problem or not, but I noticed I have multiple instances of HID devices, keyboards and mice in my Windows 7 Device manager.

I have the following hardware:
-Razer BlackWidow Ultimate keyboard
-Logitech G502 Proteus Core Mouse

Device manager shows the following:

Human Interface Devices:

• HID-compliant consumer control device
  
• HID-compliant consumer control device
  
• HID-compliant consumer control device
  
• HID-compliant device
  
• HID-compliant device
  
• HID-compliant device
  
• HID-compliant device
  
• HID-compliant device
  
• HID-compliant device
  
• Logitech Gaming Virtual Keyboard
  
• Logitech Gaming Virtual Mouse
  
• Razer BlackWidow Ultimate
  
• Razer BlackWidow Ultimate
  
• USB Input Device
  
• USB Input Device
  
• USB Input Device
  
• USB Input Device

Keyboards:

• HID Keyboard Device
  
• HID Keyboard Device
  
• HID Keyboard Device
  
• Razer BlackWidow Ultimate

Mice and other pointing devices:

• HID-compliant mouse
  
• HID-compliant mouse
  
• Razer BlackWidow Ultimate

I don't have other USB devices plugged in other than external harddrives, external card readers and a USB mic.

On the latest reformt, I previously had non USB keyboard (removed), and a Razer Diamondback mouse (removed), and no other USB devices.

Any advice?

Thank you!

-Arin

[for]

okay.. but my trackpad isnt working

[_I_]

if its a laptop, get the driver from the oem site

[Carlsberg]

I have 26 entries under the hid section and its all normal, multiple device drivers. My Kb has usb's, a clock, touchscreen, mouse, two scroll wheels and lots of other stuff. They all need device drivers loaded and they show up as "compliant consumer device", if it all works and there are no yellow or red flags then your good.

[The Legacy]

Although it's worth cleaning up extra drivers, it's worth noting that MANY gaming keyboards and mice will add multiple copies of itself in order to do what is called "Emulated N-Key Rollover".

The earlier video link that AINSLEY 2 posted (and I'll repost here because the formatting broke: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWkvzycD5PE ) explains it extremely well, but in short, USB technology is extremely limited in how it can respond to keyboard and mouse inputs in comparison to the PS/2 standard that it replaced.

With PS/2 you could in theory press every single key at the same time and it would register (known as N-Key Rollover), whereas most USB keyboards can only record 2 keys held at the same time (known as 2-Key Rollover). To emulate this, USB keyboard manufacturers would essentially have the keyboard run multiple versions of itself, each driver sending each submitted response (so for example, if your keyboard had 6-Key Rollover, it may have 3 HID device entries in Device Manager). The same is relatively true for mice.

TL;DR: No, it's not a bug. Yes, it's intended behaviour. And yes, removing them could make your keyboard all sorts of confused and wondering what it did to deserve it. :P (And if you unplug every USB device, yes you could remove the extras if applicable, but like what everyone else said, if it works, don't touch it. Trying to fix what's not broken could break it)

EDIT - Taking a closer look at the OP's post, I wanted to point out something interesting that can make this even easier to tell:

"Razer BlackWidow Ultimate"

In this case, Razer made their own drivers, and the device ended up adding two HID devices, one Keyboard device, AND one Mouse and Other Pointing Devices to service that one peripheral. Again, not a bug. :P

[KT 💣KλBoƠM ♡ ᓚᘏᗢ]

TL;DR:

Problem: Mouse cursor moving across screen on its own.
Fix: Uninstalled all the other mouse drivers listed in device manager.

Detailed explanation:

Even though this is old I came here looking for help on mine. I am not a computer noob but just some self taught middle aged woman who loves to game and suddenly my mouse cursor is moving on its own. Of course I thought I dropped the mouse too many times and replaced it temporarily with some crap mouse but the problem persisted. Tried in a different USB port. Still the problem persisted. Why I came to this thread was because I noticed 5 different mice listed in the Device Manager and I thought well that makes sense as I have used a few different mice over the last 2 years. (A little back story if interested for clarity but can be skipped: I have sleep apnea but had very bad anemia on top of that which together caused not only lack of sleep but to be so weak and tired all the time I tended to fall asleep at the computer and drop my mouse as well as even fall asleep standing up which led to other damages including my keyboard tray. I am no longer anemic so that is no longer a problem). But to update the drive on the particular mouse since the other things I tried did not solve the issue I needed to know which mouse drive to click update on. Ya, I know, I probably should just go to the manufacture's site and download the latest mouse drivers and do it that way .. but I did not think of that until typing this. Anyway, getting to the point.

What I did was disable each mouse listed in the Device Manager one by one. The bottom one was my current one. I started on the bottom thinking it was the oldest. I used the TAB key to move around and enable that one again and uninstalled the others since nothing happened when I disabled each of them one by one. Thus I now have only 1 mouse driver installed and you know what? My mouse cursor is FINALLY not moving across my screen in game anymore! BOY that was annoying!

So even though only partially related I thought it was relevant enough to include here.

[nomanscrack]

Originally posted by KaTiE 💣KλBoƠM ♡:

TL;DR:

Problem: Mouse cursor moving across screen on its own.
Fix: Uninstalled all the other mouse drivers listed in device manager.

Detailed explanation:

Even though this is old I came here looking for help on mine. I am not a computer noob but just some self taught middle aged woman who loves to game and suddenly my mouse cursor is moving on its own. Of course I thought I dropped the mouse too many times and replaced it temporarily with some crap mouse but the problem persisted. Tried in a different USB port. Still the problem persisted. Why I came to this thread was because I noticed 5 different mice listed in the Device Manager and I thought well that makes sense as I have used a few different mice over the last 2 years. (A little back story if interested for clarity but can be skipped: I have sleep apnea but had very bad anemia on top of that which together caused not only lack of sleep but to be so weak and tired all the time I tended to fall asleep at the computer and drop my mouse as well as even fall asleep standing up which led to other damages including my keyboard tray. I am no longer anemic so that is no longer a problem). But to update the drive on the particular mouse since the other things I tried did not solve the issue I needed to know which mouse drive to click update on. Ya, I know, I probably should just go to the manufacture's site and download the latest mouse drivers and do it that way .. but I did not think of that until typing this. Anyway, getting to the point.

What I did was disable each mouse listed in the Device Manager one by one. The bottom one was my current one. I started on the bottom thinking it was the oldest. I used the TAB key to move around and enable that one again and uninstalled the others since nothing happened when I disabled each of them one by one. Thus I now have only 1 mouse driver installed and you know what? My mouse cursor is FINALLY not moving across my screen in game anymore! BOY that was annoying!

So even though only partially related I thought it was relevant enough to include here.

I also have 4 other mice showing up in device manager, disabling them helped with my polling issues for my 2khz mouse, I then uninstalled the disabled ones and then scanned for hardware changes and the 4 other showed up again, so i think im just going to have to keep them disabled vs uninstalling them.

[_I_]

many usb wireless k/m show up as both a keyboard and mouse, even when its only for a single device

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Many Mice show up as a Virtual Keyboard due to Macro support as well.


Overall I see nothing wrong. What the OP is seeing in Device Manager is normal. This has always been the case for USB Keyboard / Mouse since I can remember under Win2k/XP. Again nothing wrong with it all.

[KT 💣KλBoƠM ♡ ᓚᘏᗢ]

A combo kit with a dongle connected to a single USB? Never used one so don't know but my friend said that.

[plat]

Yes, it is very typical to have multiple entries like that. I do see way more entries for you than I have in my Device Manager. In general, it is best to leave them alone.

This is some trickery I learned because I don't like multiple NVIDIA drivers sitting unused in Driver Store. But you can also do this for removal of older keyboard and mouse entries. If the Admin. cmd warns you that the driver is in use, heed the warning and move on. This works in both Windows 10 and 11 (used in both OSs).

Open cmd and right-click on it to run as Administrator. Copy/paste the following command:

pnputil -e > C:\drivers.txt

Now look for a drivers.text file in File Explorer. It should be right there. Scroll down until you come across some drivers you want to delete, they should have older time stamps than the ones that are in current use. The next command you enter in cmd in will be this:

pnputil.exe -d oem.inf

BUT, you must put the number of the driver you want to delete--type the number in after "oem" and before the ".inf" That's dotinf. Example: to delete my useless older NV driver, I would do:

pnputil.exe -d oem3.inf Do not copy/paste this example--you must enter the driver number relevant to your hardware from that drivers list. Pay attn. to the space after "exe and before the hyphen.

Is that clear? You have to specify the driver number. To figure out what to delete, choose the ones with the earliest time stamps.

Now, if you delete the wrong mouse or keyboard driver, just shut off the computer using the Power button. When you boot back on, Windows will reinstall that driver.

Source: https://superuser.com/questions/1154008/win10-how-can-i-delete-driver-files-c-windows-system32-driverstore-filerepos

If you don't see at least some of the entries gone from Device Manager after doing this, then I would just leave it be. Edit: If the # of drivers in the list is fewer than the entries you see in Device Manager, again, I'd just leave it.

[KT 💣KλBoƠM ♡ ᓚᘏᗢ]

I remember when I had an issue where my mouse cursor was always moving that figuring out which one listed to remove fixed my issues. I don't know what causes that but I wonder, can there ever been too many in the list? My tech when he works on my computer, his mouse and keyboard get added to the list and for some reason it was his that caused my mouse cursor issue.