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I am having problems installing a USB-to-Ethernet (model HB-T66) on my HP ProLiant ML310e Gen8 v2 server (Intel Xeon) running Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard.

In Device Manager, the device appears at "Other Devices" as "USB 2.0 10/100M Ethernet Adaptor" and the icon contains an exclamation mark indicating it was not properly installed.

Windows won't find the driver online and,since the adapter is a cheap chinese device, there is not available driver for download on the web.

Is there any way to install this kind of device?

device picture

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Jonas
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  • You'll need to use a PCIe NIC instead. They're cheap, and they will prove to be much more stable and well-performing in the long run. – EEAA Jan 07 '16 at 17:23
  • @EEAA well, there are some deployments which use every PCIe port on the motherboard (storage server comes to mind first), so actually I'd recommend a newer USB adapter instead of PCIe – Anubioz Jan 07 '16 at 17:26
  • @Anubioz - A real NIC's adaptor will have it's own CPU to do all the offload and calculation it's no way comparable to a USB plug. For home it's another story, had to buy 2 to find one working on a 2012R2, but cost like 10$, so no worry. (but I would not run a production server off that NIC) – yagmoth555 Jan 07 '16 at 20:30
  • @yagmoth555, I'm just saying that it's a mistake to treat everyone who asks about something you've never seen yourself in your work as a home-user noobs. Look at this [undeniably enterprise-only supermicro motherboard](http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/C600/X10DRD-L.cfm) - it has only one PCI-e slot and god I know a thousand things i'd better use it for (especially since any server motherboard has dual+ Ethernet port already).If I need a third LAN (f.e. emergent access), i'd easily take this [Linksys USB-to-LAN](http://www.linksys.com/us/p/P-USB3GIG/) over PCI-e. – Anubioz Jan 07 '16 at 20:49
  • Real problem is in buying hardware from NoName companies that cease to exist after they sold their stuff - you won't get any drivers for thier products, but not in the USB->LAN technology which is perfectly useful in business environment. – Anubioz Jan 07 '16 at 20:52
  • @Anubioz I agree, will update my answer. As yes you are right such can work. I dont argue that point. My point is buy another's one to see itf it work, dont try to rewrite a driver. What happen if a second tech format that server and got to re-install that in urgency ? if the OP got to play around with some driver and such ? (and BTW, a ML310 is far far away to be a microserver) – yagmoth555 Jan 07 '16 at 20:52
  • Yes, I agree that buying another adapter from some company that can be trusted to provide support for a reasonable amount of time is the only acceptable solution here. But it doesn't have to be PCI-e as a must... – Anubioz Jan 07 '16 at 20:58
  • I solved the problem. First I installed on a regular Win7/10 machine and the device was correctly identified. Them I copied the drive files from Windows\System32 folder and used them on the server. – Jonas Mar 31 '16 at 19:20

2 Answers2

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As it's not seen natively by the OS, without available/working driver, no.

At the price of such device, please get one 2012R2's ready, will save you headache, and your co-worker headache too.

yagmoth555
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There is no simple way to do that without a native driver for windows 8 from the manufacturer of the device.

First, you can try to edit the driver's .inf file as described in this guide to add Windows 8 support to existing Windows 7 driver.

If there is no Windows 7 driver available or if modifying the .inf file won't help - the only way to use the device would be via USB pass-through to a Hyper-V/VmWare virtual machine with an older OS version.

Anubioz
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