Want to know if someone tried to insert a USB drive into your personal computer or laptop?
You want to check if someone has tried to copy something from your PC working when you were away?
Note that Windows keeps a historical of all connected USB devices not for digital forensic purposes, but for performance purposes.
In this tutorial I will show you how check USB history in Windows 10 using a free tool called USBDeview. The latter reveals all the USB devices connected to your computer.
How can we view Windows USB history?
You may not know it, but when you connect a USB device in Windows, it leaves traces in the registry.
The registry is a database in Windows that stores operating system settings, hardware devices, software programs, and user preference settings.
Every time we insert a USB drive into a computer, a registry key with the name "USBSTOR"is created.
This registry key stores information about this USB device. Date and time of connection, type of USB device and its identifier… All the information that the operating system needs to know can be found in this registry key.
Thus, the application USBDeview will display the contents of this registry key.
How do I view the history of USB devices?
First of all, you must download the Windows utility USBDeview. It is provided by Nirsoft, they also have a lot of other cool utilities.
USBDeview works on all Windows operating systems: Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 2003, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 10. (32-bit and 64-bit systems).
After downloading unzip the software and run it, you will see a screen like this.
You can double click on the device to view the exact date and time of its first connection and its last connection to the computer.
No installation is required for this small program. You can run anytime and quickly check all previous USB devices used by someone in your Windows device.
Besides using USBDeview to display all connected USB devices, it can also be used to troubleshoot USB connection issues.
Simply right click on the problematic USB device and select "Uninstall selected devices".
Uninstalling the device will clean the tracks so that the USB device can be reinstalled automatically with the correct settings and updated.
And There you go ! Using these simple methods, you can now check the history of the USB device from any Windows device and gain control of each of the devices that have already entered your computer.