Mystery of the "sometimes" driver (sometimes works, sometimes not)..?

I have this old-ish Midi interface.
The last driver was a windows 8 driver. So, I restart in unsigned driver mode and browse manually to the driver. I made alterations in the .INF file so Win10 would be happier.
Win10 loads it up but complains. So a bit sad I do a normal reboot. To my surprise, the driver has installed and the Device Manager shows the right name!! Great, it seems to have worked.

Then a few days later, it goes back to "unrecognized device". So I do the same procedure again and it complains but works! Then I use it happily for a few days, even rebooting into normal mode, and it works. But after a few days it goes off again!

This is really weird. Any advice?
(1st image - not working) (2nd image - it works!)

dalchina said:

If Windows finds a driver version different to what it expects, it will typically replace it. If you need to use a version different to that because of hardware compatibility, you need to protect the driver you have installed by preventing its update.

OK thanks, I found something in there which lets me turn off automatic driver updating when windows is updated. I hope that fixes it. Looks hopeful. We'll see.

Actually I tried everything (above) and it worked for a few days, then the driver was knocked out again. So basically I am back to square one: a drive that works for days, then suddenly is knocked out.

dalchina said:

Can you identify an update just before the time that occurred?

Thanks. I used the Get-WindowsUpdateLog powershell to give me this:


Mode LastWriteTime Length Name---- ------------- ------ ----d----- 9/16/2017 3:23 PM SymCacheInput----------------File(s):
C:\Windows\logs\WindowsUpdate\WindowsUpdate.20170911.175236.692.2.etl C:\Windows\logs\WindowsUpdate\WindowsUpdate.20170911.180444.380.1.etl C:\Windows\logs\WindowsUpdate\WindowsUpdate.20170911.185115.095.1.etl C:\Windows\logs\WindowsUpdate\WindowsUpdate.20170911.190412.082.1.etl C:\Windows\logs\WindowsUpdate\WindowsUpdate.20170911.191539.327.1.etl C:\Windows\logs\WindowsUpdate\WindowsUpdate.20170911.213250.627.1.etl C:\Windows\logs\WindowsUpdate\WindowsUpdate.20170911.215024.786.1.etl C:\Windows\logs\WindowsUpdate\WindowsUpdate.20170912.073110.099.1.etl C:\Windows\logs\WindowsUpdate\WindowsUpdate.20170912.180544.683.1.etl C:\Windows\logs\WindowsUpdate\WindowsUpdate.20170912.180544.683.2.etl0.00%16.16%32.32%48.48%64.65%80 .81%96.97%100.00%

However, the driver was knocked out today sometime (16th Sept). It was working fine this AM, then lunchtime, it stopped working. Is there another way to see what happend to my computer at lunchtime. I gather from the above that the last update was 2017-09-12 , ie. a few days ago.

And then in the control panel:

dalchina said:

Possible ideas:

Aha, I did find a Windows Defender update at 12pm, just about the time when my driver failed.

But I looked into the settings and I can't find out where I can tell Defender to leave my drivers alone...?