About Logitech Driver Interface Drivers
Something interesting happens on Windows 10 systems with Logitech mice and unifying transceivers. Go into Device Manager, and turn on “Show hidden devices” in the View menu. On such PCs, you’ll see a usually hidden device category called “DriverInterface” show up. On systems with a Logitech mouse and unifying transceiver (UT for short), at least two Logitech Driver Interface devices appear. In figuring out more about Logitech Driver Interface drivers, I’ve learned what the icon question mark means. To begin, here’s what these items look like on most of my Logitech-equipped PCs (5 of 9 here at Chez Tittel):
All three items include blue question marks. What’s that about?
The Question Mark in Logitech Driver Interface Drivers
Turns out that the blue question mark has a specific meaning when it shows up in Device Manager. Here’s a table from a Lenovo web page entitled “What does the icons mean in Device Manager” [sic: should of course be “What do the icons mean in Device Manager?”].
Here are symbols that can appear on DevMgr icons, with associated meanings.
[Click image for full-sized view.]
As you can see (or perhaps not) a question mark comes with an explanation. It reads “This indicates that an exact device-specific driver is not available, and that a compatible driver has been installed.” Curiously, driver information appears as normal and unexceptional in the Driver tab for that device, as follows:
Things get interesting when you click the “Driver Details” button (outlined in blue on the preceding screenshot). Normally, this is how one produces vendor IDs and other useful descriptive information about an underlying physical or virtual device. But here, we get none of that. This is what shows up instead:
What’s It All Mean?
This final message in the sequence tells us everything we need to know. Microsoft provides a compatible driver (as the question mark indicates). But that driver is neither needed nor used. It’s not even loaded, as the response window clearly states. This also tells us why these items don’t show up unless we force them to appear with “Show hidden devices” in Device Manager. Because they’re not needed, loaded, or used, DevMgr need not show them to us, either. I’ve been trying to “fix” these for years. Now I finally understand that no fixing is needed, because there’s nothing going on here anyway. Go figure!