M Hutchinson said:
Anna,
Yes I have checked for BIOS updates and USB2.0 Drivers. Nothing is
connected
into the usb port at the time of bootup. I am buggered in understanding
what
the hell is wrong!
--
**************************
* Michael Hutchinson
* MCH - IT Solutions
* South Africa
* (e-mail address removed)
Michael:
I can really sympathize with you re the aggravating problem you're
experiencing. All I can say is that these USB non-recognition and other
USB-related problems have been vexing all of us for some time now. We've
become increasingly convinced that the relatively large number of problems
in this area involving the non-recognition of USB devices that we've all
been experiencing is an indication that there is something seriously flawed
with respect to either the USB 2.0 specifications, possibly involving
quality control issues affecting the manufacturer of these USB devices as
well as supporting components such as motherboards and other USB-related
components. Then too, we've become increasingly suspicious of the XP OS as
it relates to its recognition of and interaction with these USB 2.0 devices.
We have encountered far too many unexplained problems affecting
detection/recognition of these devices and their erratic functioning not to
believe that something is seriously amiss in this area.
We continually encounter situations where a USB 2.0 device - generally
involving a flash drive or USB external hard drive, will work perfectly fine
in one machine and not in another. And, in far too many cases, we're unable
to determine why this is so since we're unable to detect any
hardware/software problem in the balking machine that would cause this
non-recognition effect.
We've put together a more-or-less checklist for troubleshooting these USB
problems that (hopefully) may be of some value to you although I realize
that most, if not all of them will not be really relevant to the problem
you're experiencing...
1. Access Disk Management and see if the USB device is listed. If so, and
there's no drive letter assigned, see if you can assign a drive letter to
the device.
2. If the USB device is listed in Disk Management with an assigned drive
letter, right-click on its listing and select Explore from the submenu.
Hopefully, Windows Explorer will open and the device will be listed.
3. Connect the USB device *directly* to a USB port on the computer, not via
a USB hub. Try different USB ports should your computer have multiple ports.
4. Avoid using a USB extension cable.
5. Try connecting a USB device (that does not contain an auxiliary power
supply) to a USB port both before and after the boot operation.
6. Where a USB (or Firewire) external HDD is involved, access Device
Manager, highlight the Disk drives listing and click on the Action menu item
and then the "Scan for hardware changes" sub-menu item. Do the same in Disk
Management > Action > Rescan disks.
7. Try alternate powering on/off methods. If the USB device contains its own
power supply, try booting up with its power on, then try powering on only
*after* the system has booted to a Desktop.
8. Try a different USB cable.
9. In the USB controllers section of Device Manager, uninstall all the USB
controllers listed and reboot.
10. If the device in question is a HDD which you installed in a USB
enclosure, jumper the USB external HDD as Master (or Single if the HDD is a
Western Digital disk). A number of users have reported that jumper
configuration corrected their non-recognition problem. In my own experience
it didn't seem to matter how a USB external HDD was jumpered. But it may be
worth a try.
11. If the device in question is a USB external HDD, first check out the HDD
with the hard drive manufacturer's diagnostic utility. If it checks out OK,
and you can remove the HDD from its enclosure (without voiding any
applicable warranty), do so and install the HDD as an internal HDD to
determine if there are problems with the drive.
12. If the USB device is connected to a USB 2.0 PCI card, try changing the
PCI slot to which it's currently connected to another one.
13. Access the website of the manufacturer of the USB device to determine if
there's any firmware update or info re the problem you're experiencing or
there's any possibility that the USB enclosure itself might be defective.
14. Determine from the manufacturer of your motherboard whether there's a
BIOS upgrade affecting USB device recognition.
P.S.
A number of posters have reported they've found useful information re
troubleshooting USB devices on this site...
http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbtrouble_e.html
If nothing works then I wonder whether your only recourse is simply a new
motherboard.
Anna
