I finally got my kit this week that when I purchased in April was marked for a mid May delivery date. Probably the only time I had more frustration and anticipation ,I was a virgin. After putting the kit together, I plugged it in and no go
. The drivers from the MK II were in the system but the DAC did not show in the sound section of the control panel. I kept getting a message to plug and the unplug my USB cable. I could not get beyond stage so finally I removed the drivers from my computer and started over again and reloaded them and encountered the same brick wall. Eventually the system finally recognized the loaded drivers 
. A day later, I tried to install the latest firmware and as Yogi Berra said it was deja vu all over again . I have DACS in two other systems that instantly load and I have used others and never had this degree of difficulty. The drivers were tough to load with the MKII using Windows 7 but I am using Windows 8 and it is even tougher. Has anybody else encountered this issue and if so, what did you do about it? 
Yep, sounds almost word for word what I went through this week with my new DS and the USB Driver.
Fresh install of Windows 8, and it kept asking to check the cable, as you said. After 2.5 hours of this, I gave up and started playing music via the Coax cable while I reformated Windows 8 and started fresh. Fresh install, loaded drivers. JRiver was flaky, but the drives at least installed. I also bought a better USB just in case. All seems working now.
I also had the problem. It seems changing sound drivers in Windows can be tricky.I had to reinstall the driver and reboot a couple of times on my CAPS (win8) server and it worked fine.
It’s a bit extreme to reinstall windows and I’d consider this a last resort. I say this in case other people think this is necessary, but everyone’s experience is different.
IMHO it’s so much easier to use the bridge than go through all the pain with usb setup and cables choices. Plus the bridge was so much better sounding than usb with my PWDII (JRiver/JPLAY) . However I do need to use usb for movie sound. I haven’t compared the SQ of the two methods with the DS yet.
Yeah, reinstalling Windows was simply because 1) this was a fresh install to begin with, and the system simply wouldn’t accept the driver, and 2) I do this for a living so it’s as easy a changing a tire for a mechanic. 
Lonely Raven said Yeah, reinstalling Windows was simply because 1) this was a fresh install to begin with, and the system simply wouldn't accept the driver, and 2) I do this for a living so it's as easy a changing a tire for a mechanic.I've been avoiding Windows 8 like the plague, but perhaps you know why are so many people having USB troubles with it?
Sorry Ted, this was my first fore into Windows 8.1 - and I really didn’t give it much a chance. After I (manually) cleaned out every instance of PSAudio in the Registry, deleted every file and folder, I still couldn’t get the USB driver to load. At that point I just wiped it and started over. Wasted too much time on it as it was. I was tempted to give Windows 7 a spin in hopes the driver would work better there, but I really wanted to learn Windows 8 a little more so I don’t get broadsided by a friend or relative with a How To question.
I use JRiver as a my graphic user interface and JPLAY for my music playback. With Windows 8 only, JPLAY has Ultrastream playback which is fabulous. I had some issue loading the drivers on the MK11 with Windows 7 but the MK1 loaded easily. I never had issues loading drivers from other DACS so what do they do to make theirs so easy to load?
The PS Audio drivers do not automatically pop up in the sound section of the control panel when I turn my DSD on from the front
. When I use the rear switch however the PS Audio drivers pop up and are ready to use. Why the rear switch kicks in the drivers and not the front control is beyond me but it allows me to play my music.
Because the front power switch only powers down the display and mutes the volume, the rear power switch power down the DAC.