Find Active USB Hubs and Controllers in Regedit

This article explains how to locate information about active USB hubs and controllers within the Windows Registry. Windows automatically tracks and records hardware configurations for all connected Universal Serial Bus devices, host controllers, and root hubs. By navigating to specific keys in the Registry Editor (Regedit), you can view hardware IDs, driver details, power states, and device connection properties.

Primary Registry Path for USB Hubs and Devices

The main location for enumerated USB hardware, including root hubs and connected external hubs, is under the Enum\USB registry branch:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\USB

Within this key, Windows organizes entries by Vendor ID (VID) and Product ID (PID), as well as dedicated entries for internal USB Root Hubs:

Expanding any of these folders reveals subkeys containing hardware IDs, friendly device names, driver details, and power management settings under the Device Parameters subkey.

Registry Path for USB Host Controllers (PCI-Based)

Physical USB controllers (such as xHCI, eHCI, or UHCI controllers integrated into the motherboard or PCIe expansion cards) are enumerated under the PCI bus branch:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\PCI

To find active USB controllers here: 1. Browse through the VEN_xxxx&DEV_xxxx subkeys. 2. Look for entries where the Class string is set to USB or the DeviceDesc value references an eXtensible Host Controller, Enhanced Host Controller, or Universal Host Controller. 3. Alternatively, check the Service string value; it typically points to USBXHCI, usbehci, or usbuhci.

Registry Paths for USB Drivers and Services

To inspect the driver services actively managing USB hubs and controllers, navigate to the Services tree:

These keys provide configuration data on the loaded kernel-mode drivers responsible for handling hub routing and controller hardware operations.