Lost All USB

(Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit)

When changing my failing secondary HDD for a new one, I had to unplug all the USB devices.

The new HDD works fine, but there is now no USB (either USB-2 or -3). The devices, on two hubs, have power but there is no sign of them in Windows. A restart did not recover them.

I took particular care to put each device back in exactly the same slot as it came out of, to no avail.

I suspect there's an easy fix for this, but I can't find anything simple online.

For what it matters, I did the drive change soon after a Windows update, but the USB was working after the update and before the drive change.

Have you tried to reinstall the USB drivers?

Mellon Head said:

Have you tried to reinstall the USB drivers?

Eh, no, not yet.

I've determined that it's only the hubs that aren't recognised, keyboard & mouse and a few other directly-connected periphs still work, so the drivers would seem to be in place, including the USB-3 ones.

The hubs are not powered, but are very lightly loaded and have always worked up 'til now.

Possibly taking the hubs out in Device Manager and restarting etc could be an option ?

You could try that. You might also consider switching to powered hubs. They are much better, and tax your motherboard's USB circuits much less, meaning they are less likely to blow from high current draw.

Mellon Head said:

You could try that. You might also consider switching to powered hubs. They are much better, and tax your motherboard's USB circuits much less, meaning they are less likely to blow from high current draw.

Identified the entries in Device Manager for the hubs; deleted them; rebooted.

Windows re-found the hubs and re-loaded the drivers, and the hubs now work as before.

What a load of nonsense just to change a hard drive !!

Thanks for your responses.

Glad you got it fixed. :)