Scenario in question:
Slowish Atom netbook. I resume from sleep or hibernation. Windows 7 login prompt displays. I have a loooong password stored in YubiKey. I plug in YubiKey, it lights up, like it's ready to do work. I press button on YubiKey to send password, nothing new appears on screen. I wait a while till whatever running background processes get their thing done coming out of sleep. I press YubiKey button again. still nothing. It's a loud environment and it's impossible to hear the "new device connected" Windows beep. I wait some more, I press YubiKey button - and finally I get my password input.
As you can probably imagine, it's annoying as hell. Because of the Atom CPU, it takes rather long for running background and OS processes to get back into a steady state after coming out of sleep and the USB subsystem to re-initialize devices.
Q: Is there some way to have some "USB device connected" popup/whatever notification displayed at Windows 7 login prompt? Is custom GINA the only way? Anything else I might've missed that would solve this usability problem?
How have you got Yubikey set up to carry out logons, as a static "OTP" or are you already using a custom Gina (like this solution from Rohos ). The Rohos solution seems to do what you want as it provides a visual indicator of the presence of the key.