Temporary USB 2.0 hassles

  • Thread starter Thread starter Hackworth
  • Start date Start date
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Hackworth

My current rig has an Asus P4B266 w/ a P4 2.4 GHz and 512MB, all running on
Win XP. The system has run perfectly for about a year and a half, but
yesterday my printer and USB pen drive stopped working. I have four NEC USB
2.0 ports on the back of my system, like this:

=== === === ===

Let's pretend they're numbered 1 through 4, from left to right.

The printer and pen drive are connected to the two *middle* ports (2 and 3).
Weirdly, my scanner, which is connected to 1, continued to work perfectly.
During the course of my testing, I found that 4 didn't work either. (On my
motherboard, the1-2 port pair and the 3-4 port pair are each connected to
their own headers, so there shouldn't have been any reason why 1 and 4
wouldn't have been working.)

I tried reinstalling all the devices and their drivers, I reinstalled the
USB 2.0 drivers, and even the motherboard chipset driver. Nothing was
working. Finally, for no good reason, 2 and 3 begain to work again and my
system is fine now.

So... could it have been a static electricity buildup? The system had been
running for about 36 hours straight, so perhaps I should have just shut it
off and walked away for a while to let the static dissipate before monkeying
with it to get everything working again. Or was this more likely just some
goofy software/driver anomaly caused by other stuff that I may have been
doing with my system?
 
try a free online virus scan - symantec, mcafee and a few others do these.

girlfriends pc had a similar problem with intermittent USB devices working.
turn out it was a virus

if virus scan shows all clear, then just make sure all connections are good

tim
 
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