USB device not recognized, in Windows 7 Only  

Hi,

A co-worker was having the same problem and it was because of (cr)apple usb keyboard plugged into the system using a (short) USB externsion cable. If the keyboard is plugged directly into the PC it appears to work OK but doesn't like the extension cable for some reason. Hope this helps someone else who might run into this issue.

Kamal

I have had Windows 7 installed on my laptop for almost a year and yesterday all my USB devices stopped working except for my mouse. I just found this solution on the web: simply turn off the computer. Unplug from power and remove the battery. Reinstall battery or plug in power and boot PC. Everything is now working.

I've spent a couple of days in the forums and trying out a few stuff but to no avail and now I'm just pulling out my hair

I have two Windows 7 64-bit laptops. Only difference between them is the processor, one is i5 and the other is i7. The i5 laptop is just not detecting any of my USB devices, from a 4GB thumb drive to a Maxtor 250GB external hard drive. And these devices work on my other i7 laptop including my Windows XP laptops. So far I've tried;

1. to update the drivers via device manager and Devices and Printers- obviously no drivers found
2. to uninstall all the devices on Other Devices as well as under Universal Serial Bus Controllers and Universal Serial Bus Virtualisation(?) - restarted my machine and the standard Windows 7 Device driver software dialog box installs the stand USB Controllers. However, if I plug in my USB thumb drives it fails to install
3. restart the laptop with my USB plugged in - Windows Explorer first detects the drive and I can see the contents but as soon as the standard Windows 7 Device driver software dialog box finishes to fail the software installation, the drive disappears from Windows Explorer.
4. tried all USB ports and all aren't working - even though the mouse works fine on all ports
5. running the Dell Diagnostics tools - but that fails to install the device drivers

Where to from here? Can anyone out there help me?

Do I have to resort to reinstalling Windows 7? Is that a definite solution? Of course, I would like to plug in my 250GB external hard drive so I can extract the 500GB of data before I do any wiping out of the system.