Windows 7 - Forcibly installing an old version of a driver?

Hello everyone.

I am trying to help my friend. He is running a fresh installation of Windows 7 64bit on a brand new HP laptop. He bought a cheap USB to MIDI adapter for music production. The adapter did not come with a driver CD.

Yesterday I was searching the internet and I have tried many different solutions I came across, but alas, to no avail. The device icon in Device Manager was taunting us with that arrogant yellow exclamation mark along with the message "This device could not start". Thank you captain obvious.

I do have a direction though. There is a driver for Windows 7 64bit for a seemingly identical product from the same manufacturer. Everybody who installed this driver reported success (except, of course, for us).

I have tried to install this driver manually, but whatever I tried, my friend's PC always replies: "Windows has detected that the current installed driver is the newest version" - and will not install the original driver supplied by the manufacturer! I will note that the driver Windows installs by default labels the adapter as "USB Aduio Device" and that's it, of course.

What I'm looking for is a way to force Windows into installing that specific driver. I am sure there's a way to do that. I wouldn't mind if it had to be done through command line/registry - I have experience with that.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, and thank you very much in advance.

If you must install this driver Windows 7 doesn't like remove the old driver you have on your computer first. If Windows 7 doesn't see the installed driver you might be able to install the one of your choice. Keep in mind Windows 7 is picky on what drivers it likes. Myself, I never force drivers into Windows 7.

Thank you for the quick reply.

How would you go with uninstalling a driver?

First of all, in device driver details window in Device Manager, there are six .sys files associated with this device. How can I know which ones are the ones I should remove?

When I was trying to remove them (I tried changing the name from driver.sys to driver .old) Windows immediately recreated that same file.

Cheers.

I would remove any and all driver associated with this device. You should be able to right click on them and click uninstall.

Yes, but if I click uninstall in device manager, the driver files still remain, and then when I'll re-plug the device Windows will install them automatically, and again will not allow me to install the specific driver I want to try. I need to prevent Windows 7 from installing ANY driver for this device by default, so I can install the one I want.

Show us a picture of your device mgr so we can see where the yellow bangs are, then we'll make an informed decision on where to go from there.

I will ask my friend to take a screenshot and upload it here.

Alright - This is the screenshot. After I plug in my usb-midi adapter, a short installation process begins automatically followed by this message:

Right click on the device in the device manager.
Select Update Driver Software
Click on Browse my computer for driver software
Select Let me pick....
Select Have Disk.
Go to the location where you stored the downloaded driver and point to it.
Select OK and follow instructions to install.

Like I said in the first post - Windows does NOT let us install the driver this way. It says "Windows has determined your current driver is up to date" resulting in us not being able to install the original driver supplied by the manufacturer!

This is why I am asking how to force an installation of this specific driver. Thanks