Troubleshooting Windows Mixed Reality Headset and Controllers

Setting up my Windows Mixed Reality Headset and Controllers turned out to be the most difficult hardware to get working I’ve used in at least 20 years. It took me about a week after I received my controllers to finally get my setup working correctly. (Mostly due to waiting for parts) None of the troubleshooting was easy to figure out or well documented so I hope if you have found this article that it helps you get up and running more quickly.

I should mention that I build my own machines, and my current hardware is a 3 year old gaming machine upgraded with the latest and greatest graphics. The age of my machine did contribute to these issues.

 

USB 3.0 Hell

Not enough USB controller resources

“Not enough USB controller resources” was the first error I got immediately when I plugged in my headset. The headset still worked although all of my Bluetooth devices stopped functioning. This turns out to be a showstopper since the controllers are Bluetooth, and the controllers are essential.  My initial research suggested that this meant my usb 3.0 port was unable to provide enough power to the headset.  I attempted to solve this problem with a powered USB hub.  This was a false lead, although the hub was useful later on for putting a USB port in an easy to reach location for plugging and unplugging the headset.

The solution was much more complicated. I have the Asus Maximus VI Motherboard, which is an early Z87 chipset based motherboard. This motherboard contains an early implementation of USB 3.0 (not 3.1).  It turns out that a sacrifice the engineers made to get more performance resulted in a limitation of 96 endpoints. This sounds like a lot but each device can take up many endpoints. When you reach 96 endpoints you receive the above error message and things stop working.

Check out USB Tree Viewer at http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbtreeview_e.html for a great diagnostic tool to help you understand what is going on.  After many modifications this is what my final, working setup looked like:

 

The solution to my USB 3.0 resource shortage was to add a PCI Express USB 3.1 card which does not share the limitations of 3.0:


ASUS PCE-AC55BT B1 Wireless-AC1200 Bluetooth 4.2 PCIe/mPCIe adapter

This card requires both an open PCI Express slot as well as a power connector (SATA style). I disabled XHCI in my bios turning all of my motherboard ports into USB 2.0 ports as well.

“Something Went Wrong” error 2181038087-12

After I had tested my new USB 3.1 ports and found them working with other devices, I plugged in my mixed reality headset and got the “Something Went Wrong” error. I had installed the latest Asmedia drivers for the card, and learned that only Microsoft drivers (!?!) work with Mixed Reality headsets. The solution to this error was to downgrade my driver to the Microsoft driver. Here is a screenshot with the correct driver installed:

Notice that the Asmedia USB 3.1 ends with (Microsoft).  The (Microsoft) at the end means you have one of the drivers that works with Windows Mixed Reality headsets. If you need to change drivers open the properties of the Extensible Host Controller in Device Manager and click Update Driver:

Click Browse my computer for driver software, followed by Let me pick from a list of available drivers.  Look for the newest driver on the list that ends with (Microsoft).

Other Issues

For other issues and general hints take a look at Microsoft’s troubleshooting guide: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/mixed-reality/troubleshooting_windows_mixed_reality

The second part of this article will cover troubleshooting Bluetooth to get the controllers to work, unfortunately this was only half the battle!

7 thoughts on “Troubleshooting Windows Mixed Reality Headset and Controllers

  • Posted on November 8, 2017 at 11:58 am

    Hey, will you be making a tutorial on using the motion controllers? That’s like a must-have right now.

    Reply
    • Posted on November 8, 2017 at 3:16 pm

      Do you mean developing in Unity targeting the motion controllers? That’s a good idea, I just got that all figured out…

      Reply
  • Posted on November 16, 2017 at 5:22 am

    I was wondering if you could help.
    I purchased the HP mixed reality headset, plugged it into a free 3.0 usb port and the GPU HDMI port.
    The portal launched, and everything was smooth as butter. Was able to use the HDMI for a couple of hours.
    Went to bed, the next day the device wont boot. Always gives me a plug into a SuperSpeed USB 3.0 port.
    The device was still plugged into the same USB 3.0 port as the day before.

    Now I ran the USB device tree tool you listed and when I plug in the HMD it’s now listed under generic usb 2.1 HUB ?
    A bit lower you can see Generic Superspeed USB HUB, but no device connected ?

    I already tried enabeling and disabeling XHCI in the bios but nothing seems to work.

    any idea ? 🙂

    Reply
  • Posted on January 3, 2018 at 7:34 am

    what model of PCI Express USB 3.1 card did you buy? I have motherboard with Asmedia 3.0 (it use 0.96 microsoft driver) and it does not work.

    Reply
  • Posted on April 30, 2018 at 2:14 pm

    Oculus and Vive can be also painful to setup. Good to know that WMRs don’t really differ much in this respect 🙁

    Reply

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