new USB devices can't be installed.

[clistposts]

About 4 or 5 days ago I noticed a problem occurring that's quite
frustrating. Whenever I plug in a new USB device into my computer, the
system sees and recognize device, however the 'Found New Hardware'
window can't install the drivers. It goes through the usual process,
however in the end it merely says it couldn't find the necessary
software. When trying these devices in other computers, there is no
problem what so ever. Back on this system, the devices receive yellow
exclamations in device manager. I have already tried the following
solutions, without success.

(a)Uninstalling/reinstalling the devices
(b)restarting
(c)power cycling and removing the batt, etc
(d)safe mode uninstall/reinstall
(e)verified that the USB controllers work fine
(f)tried to manually install the drivers via a specific file or C:
\Windows\i336
(g)system restore
(e)looked for BIOS updates
(f)Windows update

There are no issues in device manager regarding my USB controllers.

If I had to guess it seems like something just needs to be reset, but
I fear this may only be done with a re-install. I would love to avoid
this because (a)this problem happened to me once before back in
November '06 and while it worked afterwards, the problem has shown up
again a mere 3 months later and (b)I take extremely good care of my
system and I can't seem to identify how this happened. I didn't
install any problems around the window when this started, so it seems
like this could be a hardware issue. Any suggestions? Help please!



Note: Sony Vaio laptop running WinXP

 

[clistposts]

Also, like I said it happened before and I solved it by re-installing
windows. I was able to narrow this problem down to my use of Windows
update, when I installed KB905749. However I didn't install any
updates this time so I don't know what happened. The only thing I've
received from Windows recently were Defender updates(which was not
installed the last time, so that is not a possible common issue)

 

[Elmo]

About 4 or 5 days ago I noticed a problem occurring that's quite
frustrating. Whenever I plug in a new USB device into my computer, the
system sees and recognize device, however the 'Found New Hardware'
window can't install the drivers. It goes through the usual process,
however in the end it merely says it couldn't find the necessary
software. When trying these devices in other computers, there is no
problem what so ever. Back on this system, the devices receive yellow
exclamations in device manager. I have already tried the following
solutions, without success.

(a)Uninstalling/reinstalling the devices
(b)restarting
(c)power cycling and removing the batt, etc
(d)safe mode uninstall/reinstall
(e)verified that the USB controllers work fine
(f)tried to manually install the drivers via a specific file or C:
\Windows\i336
(g)system restore
(e)looked for BIOS updates
(f)Windows update

There are no issues in device manager regarding my USB controllers.

If I had to guess it seems like something just needs to be reset, but
I fear this may only be done with a re-install. I would love to avoid
this because (a)this problem happened to me once before back in
November '06 and while it worked afterwards, the problem has shown up
again a mere 3 months later and (b)I take extremely good care of my
system and I can't seem to identify how this happened. I didn't
install any problems around the window when this started, so it seems
like this could be a hardware issue. Any suggestions? Help please!

XP asks for USB drivers:
http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbtrouble_e.html#xp_asks_for_drivers

Other USB Help sites:
http://www.usbman.com/WinME USB Guide.htm

General USB troubleshooting in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310575

Troubleshooting for USB drives
http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbtrouble_e.html