USB devices need to have drivers installed for each port??!!

now i'm almost positive that this is incorrect, but apparently this is the situation on my parents winblows xp boxes. two devices, a business card scanner and a usb wireless card. i plug the device in, install the driver, device works fine. i unplug the device, and plug it into one of the other USB ports... and WINDOWS PROMPTS TO INSTALL A DRIVER AGAIN????? i had to install the driver TWICE, ONCE FOR EACH USB PORT??? now, that CANNOT be right, is it? i'm just starting to learn how to write usb drivers on linux, and from what i have read so far, everytime a device gets plugged into the USB host controller, one of your drivers functions gets called to see if it is the device that it controls. if it is, you would update w/e state needs to be updated in your driver and carry on. isn't that the whole great thing about USB?? that u can plug in devices willynilly, add more hubs, etc..? so is it that the drivers for these two devices are royal pieces of ****??

i thought it was a pretty straightforward question...

Did you post this in the Lounge too? You really shouldn't cross-post like that you know. It's a bad thing to do. Anyhoo, have you tried the DevHardware forums? you'll prolly get a much better answer there.