front usb ports not working

[ljl56]

New ipod for my daughter and tried to plug it into my front usb ports
which suddenly don't work. My empty one in the back works. how can I
restore the front ones? When I try deleting all the usb's from the
device manager, I wind up eliminating my ability to use my mouse. how
can I know which item in the device manager corresponds to my front usb
ports?

I'm frustrated -- I guess this is like the old fashioned missing
batteries after opening xmas gifts.

By the way, the front ports won't work now for other devices either.

 

[David Vair]

First thing is did they ever work?
If they did work and now don't it is most likely a loose cable from the back of the ports to the
motherboard or they were disabled in the BIOS.
There is no real way of telling which ports correspond to which in the Device Manager.

 

[V Green]

First thing is did they ever work?
If they did work and now don't it is most likely a loose cable from the back of the ports to the
motherboard or they were disabled in the BIOS.
There is no real way of telling which ports correspond to which in the

Device Manager.

Well, there is, but not directly...

Plug stuff into the back ones, fill them all.
Or, alternatively, do it one at a time, checking between each.

Check for the devices in Device Manager and which port(s)
the stuff is on.

The one(s) left over after checking are the front ones.

 

[ljl56]

Yes, they worked fine -- even yesterday while charging the ipod. But
when we went to transfer the music to the ipod they didn't work, and
now nothing works on those ports. How do I check the bios? I did go
into it and it seemed that the only usb things that were disabled were
the mouse and keyboard usb's (although both of those are working fine)
so I enabled them. Still nothing.

 

[ljl56]

I plugged into every port in back but I can't tell from the device
manager which ports are in use. What am I looking for?

 

[V Green]

Oops, you're right...

I thought that you could see that info from there,
but you can't.

Do you see any yellow exclamation marks in front
of any of the Universal Serial Bus Controller entries
when you click the + sign in front of it?

If not, then XP thiks everything is fine, and you MAY have
had a hardware failure.

I have burned up USB ports by drawing too much current
from them, even though this is NOT supposed to be possible,
they were reported by the system as operational, even though
they were not.

Probably the most direct solution would be to buy a USB
hub and plug it into the still-working ports then plug all
your stuff ino that.

Unless you have lots of spare time and want to continue
messing with this...

 

[jt3]

I thought you could if you plugged in a flash or thumb drive--doesn't it
normally show up dependent upon the controller when in, and not when
unplugged? My XP is down right now, so I can't check to see if my memory is
correct, but I thought I had used that feature before . . .

 

[V Green]

Yeah, I think that you can see details
in the Removable Storage subtree of Computer
Management (don't know for sure - don't have
any of these plugged in on this box).