So it's because some USB devices might report the same ID and Windows doesn't want to accidentally confuse one for the other, right?
What would actually need to happen for this to go wrong? You'd need two different USB devices, that are not only cheap/bad (using a non-unique ID), but they'd have to just happen to actually share the ID as well.
Isn't that a rather unlikely thing to happen? Unless many devices report a very common ID such as 0, or something.
Then, I'd have to unplug one device, and plug in the other into a different port, and what would happen is the OS would try and "talk" to the device using the wrong driver, yes?
But, given that Windows doesn't go through the whole "installing new device" spiel if you plug the same device again into the same port ... what if I would unplug that device, and then plug the other device (that reports the same ID as the first) into that same USB port. Then Windows would still get confused right? So the problem isn't even really solved, at all. It just makes it slightly less likely to happen (by a factor of your number of free USB ports).
Okay so that is one thing. But then, from what I read in this thread, I get the idea that Linux in fact does consider devices with the same ID to be the same device, regardless of port (correct?). So, in Linux you'd run into this problem? Has anyone ever actually experienced it? Because I certainly haven't.
And then there's the part that, if the problem occurs, you'll figure it out real quick, because it only happens right after you plug in this new USB toy that you recently bought, on the cheap. That's not too bad, is it? I bought a €1.50 USB-hub a while back, noticed my keyboard and mouse started acting glitchy, didn't take a second to figure out it was probably that cheap thing, and threw it out.
What would actually need to happen for this to go wrong? You'd need two different USB devices, that are not only cheap/bad (using a non-unique ID), but they'd have to just happen to actually share the ID as well.
Isn't that a rather unlikely thing to happen? Unless many devices report a very common ID such as 0, or something.
Then, I'd have to unplug one device, and plug in the other into a different port, and what would happen is the OS would try and "talk" to the device using the wrong driver, yes?
But, given that Windows doesn't go through the whole "installing new device" spiel if you plug the same device again into the same port ... what if I would unplug that device, and then plug the other device (that reports the same ID as the first) into that same USB port. Then Windows would still get confused right? So the problem isn't even really solved, at all. It just makes it slightly less likely to happen (by a factor of your number of free USB ports).
Okay so that is one thing. But then, from what I read in this thread, I get the idea that Linux in fact does consider devices with the same ID to be the same device, regardless of port (correct?). So, in Linux you'd run into this problem? Has anyone ever actually experienced it? Because I certainly haven't.
And then there's the part that, if the problem occurs, you'll figure it out real quick, because it only happens right after you plug in this new USB toy that you recently bought, on the cheap. That's not too bad, is it? I bought a €1.50 USB-hub a while back, noticed my keyboard and mouse started acting glitchy, didn't take a second to figure out it was probably that cheap thing, and threw it out.