Nine times out of ten, a G923 that G HUB refuses to see is one of four things: it’s plugged into a USB hub or a front-panel port, the little mode switch on the wheel base is set to the wrong console, G HUB’s background service has died quietly, or the firmware update the wheel started three months ago never finished. Work through those four in that order before you touch anything else, and you’ll probably be racing again inside fifteen minutes.
If none of those fix it, there’s a longer list below, ordered by how often each one has actually solved the problem on my own rigs and the ones I’ve helped friends untangle. I’ve owned a G923 for about three years (the Xbox/PC version, bolted to a Playseat Challenge and later a cheap aluminium profile rig), and it has vanished from G HUB more times than I’d like to admit. It always came back. The wheel is almost never dead. The software around it is just fragile in a way Logitech hasn’t fixed since the G29 days.
First, figure out which kind of “not detected” you have
This matters because people lump three different failures under the same search phrase.
Case A: the wheel does nothing at all. No calibration sweep when you plug it in, no lights, Windows makes no connection sound. That’s a power or cable problem, not a G HUB problem, and G HUB is a red herring.
Case B: the wheel calibrates and Windows sees it, but G HUB shows nothing. Open Windows’ joystick panel (Win+R, type joy.cpl) and look for “G923 Racing Wheel”. If it’s listed there and you can see the axes move when you turn the wheel, the hardware is fine. G HUB is the problem. This is the most common case by a mile.
Case C: G HUB sees it, but your game doesn’t. That’s a whole different article, but the short fix is usually that the game launched before the wheel was plugged in, or a Steam Input controller profile is eating the device. Restart the game with the wheel already connected and disable Steam Input for that title.
Sort yourself into one of these before you start reinstalling things. I’ve watched people uninstall G HUB three times over a bad USB cable.
Fix 1: The USB port (seriously, do this first)
The G923 is picky about USB in a way that borders on comical for a $300 wheel. It wants a USB 2.0 or 3.0 port directly on the motherboard, on the back of the PC. Not a hub. Not the ports on the top of your case. Not a monitor’s USB passthrough. The front-panel ports on most cases route through a flimsy internal header and are the single most frequent cause of the wheel disconnecting mid-race and refusing to reappear.
If you’re on a desk setup with a hub because the cable doesn’t reach (the G923’s USB lead is about 1.8m, and it’s captive, so you can’t just swap it for a longer one), a powered hub with its own wall adapter is tolerable. An unpowered one will cause you grief eventually. I ran mine through a $12 Amazon hub for a month and had to power-cycle the wheel almost every session.
Also try a different rear port entirely. Some boards have specific ports that share a controller with something else, and Logitech’s driver seems to hate being enumerated behind certain ASMedia controllers. A different port on the same board can genuinely be the difference.
Fix 2: The mode switch on the wheel base
There’s a small slide switch on the top of the base near the USB and power cables. On the PlayStation version it toggles between PS and PC; on the Xbox version it’s Xbox and PC. If it’s on the console position while you’re on a PC, G HUB will often refuse to see it, or see it briefly and drop it. Windows might still list it in joy.cpl as a generic controller, which is what makes this so confusing.
Flip it to PC, unplug the USB, wait ten seconds, plug it back in. The wheel should do its full calibration sweep (lock to lock, both directions). If it does only a half sweep or twitches, the power brick isn’t delivering enough current. Which brings us to the bit people skip.
Fix 3: Power supply and the “half calibration” tell
The G923 needs its 24V brick plugged in before the USB. Order matters more than it should. If you plug USB first, the wheel enumerates as a low-power device and G HUB either ignores it or shows it as a G29 (yes, really; they share an enumeration path and older G HUB builds got confused).
The brick itself is a known weak point. Symptoms of a dying one: the wheel calibrates slowly or only partially, force feedback feels weak even at 100% in-game, and the wheel disconnects under heavy FFB load when it draws the most current (kerbs at Eau Rouge, big saves in an oversteering car). If that’s what you’re seeing, borrow a brick from a G29 owner if you know one; they’re the same 24V 2.5A supply. Replacements from Logitech run about $30, and the third-party ones on Amazon are a lottery.
Fix 4: G HUB’s background service is dead
This is the one that fixed it for me most often over three years, and it’s the one nobody mentions in the recycled troubleshooting listicles.
G HUB isn’t one program. There’s the window you see, and there’s a background agent (lghub_agent.exe and lghub_updater.exe) that actually talks to the hardware. The window can be open and cheerfully showing an empty device list while the agent has crashed. Quit G HUB fully from the system tray, open Task Manager, and kill every process starting with lghub. Then relaunch. If the wheel appears, you’ve found your problem, and I’m sorry to say it’ll happen again. It especially likes to die after Windows sleep.
If it happens constantly, uncheck “Enable Windows fast startup” in power options. Fast startup keeps kernel state across shutdowns, which means the G HUB driver stack never gets a clean reset, and the Logitech agent gets progressively flakier until it stops seeing anything. Disabling it is the single best “make it stop” change I’ve made.
Fix 5: The stuck firmware update
Here’s the one that costs people the most nights. G HUB pushes a G923 firmware update, the progress bar sits at some percentage, someone gets impatient or the agent crashes, and the wheel is left half-flashed. From then on it shows up in Device Manager as “G923 Racing Wheel (bootloader)” or under a generic HID name, and G HUB won’t list it because it’s not, as far as the software is concerned, a G923 anymore.
The fix: unplug the USB, hold both paddle shifters and the PS/Xbox button (the one below the d-pad) while plugging it back in, and keep holding for about ten seconds. The wheel enters DFU mode. Open G HUB and it should offer to reflash. Let it finish this time. Don’t touch anything until the wheel does its calibration sweep on its own. If G HUB still won’t offer the update, Logitech’s older standalone “Firmware Update Tool” from their support site sometimes works where G HUB doesn’t.
Fix 6: Windows updated the driver behind your back
Windows Update loves to replace Logitech’s driver with a generic “HID-compliant game controller” driver, after which G HUB loses the plot. Device Manager, expand “Human Interface Devices” and “Sound, video and game controllers”, find anything Logitech or G923, right-click, uninstall, and tick “delete the driver software for this device” if it’s offered. Unplug, reboot, plug in with the power brick already connected, let G HUB reinstall. Do the same for any ghost entries; show hidden devices from the View menu and you may find six dead G923 entries from previous ports. Nuke them all.
Fix 7: Reinstalling G HUB properly (not the way you did it)
The uninstaller leaves behind %LOCALAPPDATA%\LGHUB and a settings database in %APPDATA%, and reinstalling over corrupt files just resurrects the corruption. Uninstall, then delete both folders by hand, then reinstall. Also disable any “clean boot” utilities, and if you run an aggressive antivirus like Bitdefender, whitelist the LGHUB folder. I’ve seen AV silently quarantine the agent, which produces the exact “window open, no devices” symptom in Fix 4.
Two other things to check in the same sitting: if you have an older Logitech Gaming Software (LGS) install lingering from a G27 or G29, it fights G HUB for the device. Remove it. And on some machines with iCUE, Armoury Crate, or Razer Synapse, those suites hook USB HID devices for RGB reasons and occasionally hijack the wheel’s enumeration. Close them, retest, and if that’s the cause, fight with each vendor’s exclusion list.
Fix 8: Try another machine before you call it dead
If the wheel doesn’t calibrate on any port on any PC, with the brick connected first, it’s probably hardware. Inside the G923, the two most common failures are a cracked solder joint on the USB connector (the captive cable puts strain on it every time someone trips over it) and a failed 24V regulator on the main board. Both are repairable if you’re handy with a soldering iron; both will void the two-year warranty, so check the date on your receipt before you open anything. Logitech’s warranty support is slow but generally does replace the unit rather than argue.
When it works but keeps dropping out
A few settings to live with once you’ve got it back:
- In G HUB, set the wheel to 900° rotation and leave it. Changing rotation per game in G HUB is slower and less reliable than doing it in the sim itself, and G HUB profiles have a habit of not switching.
- Turn G HUB’s “TrueForce” slider down to 30 to 50 percent. At 100 it’s a buzzy mess in most titles and it’s part of why people call the G923 an “improved G29 that doesn’t feel improved”. The actual FFB gain, the one that matters, is the in-game one.
- In iRacing, run the in-sim strength around 20 to 25 (out of 100) with damping off; in ACC, gain 75 to 85 with road effects at 10 and minimum force at 0. In Gran Turismo 7 on console, torque 5, sensitivity 1. That’s where the wheel stops clipping constantly and you can actually feel a Miata start to rotate at Laguna Seca.
- Forced desk mounting makes disconnects worse. The wheel’s 2.1 Nm of helical-gear torque doesn’t sound like much until it’s ripping the clamp loose and yanking the USB. If the base walks on your desk, the USB is being tugged too.
Should you keep fixing this, or move on?
Fair question after a bad night. The G923 is fine hardware for around $300 (often $250 on sale, and Logitech runs it down to $200 during Black Friday almost every year), but the gear-driven feel and the G HUB flakiness are the two things people on r/simracing and the Logitech Discord complain about constantly. If you’re at the point where you’re fighting the software weekly, I would not buy a second G923 or trade to a G29.
The move for most people is a Moza R5 bundle (around $500 with the ES wheel, 5.5 Nm direct drive, and Pit House software that is genuinely less annoying than G HUB) or a Fanatec CSL DD (about $350 for the base alone, 5 Nm, 8 Nm with the boost kit; superb wheel, historically dreadful shipping and support). Either is a bigger step up in feel than any G923 tweak, and both are less likely to disappear on you.
But if the G923 is otherwise fine and it’s just this one bad night, don’t spend $500 in a rage. Go back up to Fix 4.
FAQ
Why does G HUB show my G923 as a G29?
Usually because the wheel enumerated before the power brick was connected, or because the mode switch is on the console position. Unplug USB, check the brick, flip the switch to PC, plug USB back in. If it persists after a clean reinstall, it’s the stuck-firmware situation in Fix 5.
Does the G923 work without G HUB?
Yes, and for many games it’s actually better. Windows sees it as a standard DirectInput wheel and most sims have native G923 profiles. You lose TrueForce, per-game profiles, and the ability to change rotation outside the game. If G HUB is the only thing failing, you can race tonight without it.
Does the PlayStation G923 work on Xbox, or the other way around?
No. The two versions have different security chips for their consoles, and they’re not cross-compatible. Both work on PC. If you’ve bought the wrong one and it’s a console problem rather than a G HUB problem, that’s why.
Before you order anything
Check three things before spending a penny. Look at the calibration sweep: full lock to lock with the brick plugged in first means the wheel is healthy and this is a software fight you’ll win. Open joy.cpl: if the axes move there, don’t reinstall anything until you’ve killed the lghub processes and disabled fast startup. And check the receipt date, because a G923 under two years old with a dodgy USB connection is a warranty replacement, not a repair bill. Only if all three come back bad should the Moza or Fanatec tab in your browser get any attention.