New
#1
USB ports only recognizing certain devices
Hi all.
Here's one for you:
THE PROBLEM:
My USB ports recognize all storage devices (large or thumb drive). They recognize my usb splitter hug. And they recognize my game controller.
They do NOT recognize: (all these devices work fine on other computers)
My external sound card (although it does draw power).
My other external sound card (no power here).
Any of the 3 USB mice I've tried (2 wireless and 1 wired).
With the non-working devices, usually it just says "device not recognized" and in the device manager I get error 43.
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BACKGROUND:
Running Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit on my Toshiba Satellite a505-s6986.
A little while back I had a virus or something (antivirus was popping up with something every couple of seconds). Tried to get rid of it and wasn't sure what was up. When I tried to restart, I'd get blue screens of death. So I backed up my data and decided to restore to factory condition.
Computer was acting a little weird; I may have messed up the install when I thought it was hanging (it kept restarting and telling me it was "starting for the first time" every time). Eventually it ran sysprep, told me something different ("preparing to start for the first time" I think) but hung there. So I said, ok, new strategy.
Long story short, I ended up taking the laptop to a friend with a completely reformatted drive (partition gone). We did a fresh install of Windows 7, this time with SP1 right in there. Computer is running great, but now the USB problem.
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THINGS WE'VE ALREADY TRIED (that haven't worked)
1) Loaded every driver I can find on the Toshiba site.
2) Installed Windows again, this time with said drivers (like the chipset driver) on the CD.
3) Updated the BIOS. Reverted BIOS to old version and updated it back.
4) Booted the computer up in Linux. Same problems with the USB are evident.
5) Uninstalling all unknown devices.
6) Shutting down the computer, taking the power cord and battery out, letting it sit for a few minutes, and booting up again.
7) Took it to a shop. Shop guy was unsure of the problem after working on it for some time. Said he believed it was probably a hardware issue of some sort but agreed it was bizarre. Said replacing the USB ports (they are not soldered onto the motherboard) might work. Or it might not.
8) Turned off USB selective suspend.
9) Sacrificed several small animals.
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OTHER THOUGHTS:
Running Device Driver finding software, it always points me back to the chipset drivers. I have run the install for this several times.
In the readme for the chipset drivers, it mentions this kind of problem and says there is a hotfix available. However, the hotfix refers only to Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP.
Personally I am not so sure it is a hardware issue, since I wasn't having this problem prior to the reinstall. Also, it doesn't make sense to me that SOME devices would work and others would not.
On the other hand, I'm told booting up in Linux ought to work around any driver problem. Maybe accurate, maybe not. I don't know.
It is possible that I may have messed something up a couple weeks ago when I opened up the computer to glue the USB drives back in place (note: they were working fine before and after. They had just fallen off the mount making them difficult to reach inside the casing). I might have shorted something - as I reconnected some of the hardware (keyboard and touchpad) I did cause the computer to restart (I know, dumb go leave things running while I put this back on). However, the computer worked fine for days after my misadventures, so a delayed reaction like this seems odd. Neither of those parts are having issues, either.
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Well, that's it. What do you guys think? I'm lost.