Incompatible bcdUSB Value Error with NI-VISA Driver Wizard

Updated Apr 4, 2023

Reported In

Driver

  • NI-VISA
  • NI-VISA 4.2
  • NI-VISA 5.1
  • NI-VISA 5.4

Operating System

  • Windows

Issue Details

I am trying to create NI-VISA Driver for my USB device but I get the following error:
ERROR -1073807178: Device Descriptor Error - incompatible bcdUSB value (expected 0x110 or greater).

What does this error mean?

Solution

The bcdUSB field describes the highest version of USB that the device supports. All USB hubs must be compliant with USB 1.1 or higher due to Windows operating system requirements.  

The bcdUSB reports the USB specification release number with which the device and its descriptors are compliant with. The bcdUSB field follows a binary coded decimal format of 0xJJMN where JJ is the major version, M is the minor version and N is the sub-minor version number. Therefore the bcdUSB field should report 0x0110 (USB 1.1) or 0x0200 (USB 2.0).
If the bcdUSB field is not reporting 0x0110 (USB 1.1) or 0x0200 (USB 2.0) for the device then the NI-VISA Driver Wizard will not allow you to create a driver for your USB RAW device and will not allow you to communicate with National Instruments software. As mentioned above, this limitation on USB devices is due to the requirements of the Windows operating system.