I have a USB device called a BU0836X - it provides electrical connections for many buttons/switches/etc so that I can create custom controllers. The manufacturer is "Leo Bodnar".
I'm not trying to advertise the device, but the product is shown here.
I'm using this regularly with Windows 10 for at least a year, and up until a few days ago, Windows was calling it a "Leo Bodnar BU0836X Interface" USB device. That's the precise name that Windows assigns to it, and I have some software that uses that exact name to interface with the device.
Bizarrely, today I noticed that my software was no longer responding to inputs from the device. I'm not 100% sure it was working yesterday (I'm not sure I used it), but I am sure it was working two days ago. Digging a little I discovered that Windows now calls the device "BU0836X Interface" - the "Leo Bodnar " prefix has been dropped! Since this is the manufacturer that usually gets prepended to the Product Name to create the Device Name, I looked in Control Panel / Devices & Printers and lo and behold the Manufacturer name is now "Unavailable".
I tried plugging it into three Windows computers, all of which show exactly the same thing - the name no longer has the "Leo Bodnar " prefix.
I plugged it into a Linux computer, and the usb-devices command lists it with the expected manufacturer name, so the name is still in the device and readable.
I have a second one of these devices that has been mostly untouched until now, so I plugged that into all of these computers, and I see the exact same results. I even tried a different USB cable.
I tried a few other USB devices I have lying around, and they are all named "[Manufacturer] [Product Name]" by Windows when connected, so I must assume that when the Manufacturer name is "unavailable", the prefix gets dropped and just the "[Product Name]" is used instead.
I want to understand what has happened here - how did the Manufacturer suddenly become "Unavailable", not just on my main PC but on all three I tried it with? Since the second USB device also behaves the same way, has there been a change in Windows in the last few days that might have uncovered this new behaviour? I don't recall installing an update in the last 48 hours. Is there something about the name "Leo Bodnar" that is causing Windows to refuse to report it? Is this name somehow offensive in some language somewhere? Has it been blacklisted?
I'm completely confused by this. What has happened?
