Solved Win 7 "Sees" Win 8 Phone on USB Port but Subsequently Ignores It

[pmillen]

Win 7 "Sees" Win 8 Phone on USB Port but Subsequently Ignores It

When I plugged in my Win 8 phone into my Win 7 laptop USB port the laptop used to open a dialog box offering action choices. Now it just (1) sounds the two tones and (2) lists a Windows phone in the Open Devices and Printers icon. Windows Explorer won't display it.

It performs normally on my other two Win 7 computers and my Win 8 Surface Pro2 so it's obviously a setting on my most frequently used laptop.

Any suggestions for resetting to the original default?

 

[TheoX]

I know how to fix this for USB sticks it seems to be working with my phone as well.

This has happened to me plenty of times with USB sticks, and what I did to fix was:

1) Go to control panel
2) Search Device Manager in the search box and click "Device Manager" from the results
3) Expand "Disk Drives" for USB or "Portable Devices" for phones.
4) Locate your device, right click it, click "Properties", go to the "Driver" tab and click "Uninstall", which is a button located at the bottom of the window.
5) Unplug your device and plug it back in. Everything should be working just fine. (It will automatically reinstall the device software).

This uninstalls the device software which gets installed when you plug in your device for the first time. It doesn't affects the device's data.


I'll do this with my phone (android) and I'll get back to you in a second.

EDIT: I just did this with my phone (Xperia M).

The phone should be located in Device Manager, under Portable Devices.

I uninstalled the driver succesfully, plugged my phone back in and it automatically reinstalled it. Working just fine!.

I suggest you try this, it worked with my phone and it did not harm (I had no problem with my pc recognizing it, nor do I have now) but I believe theres a big possibility that its a driver issue, so I suggest you try it. Remember, it only uninstalls the driver from the computer you do it at, nothing from the device itself. Good luck!

 

[TheoX]

Another case is that it could be disabled, so go to the exact same place you went to uninstall, and if theres a button saying "Enable", click that.

 

[pmillen]

Thanks for the prompt replies. I had looked through Device Manager prior to starting my thread. I can't locate anything that appears to apply.

I opened the entries that I thought could be relevant.

I wonder why my device mgr. isn't like yours.

 

[TheoX]

Hmmm, that's weird
I'm not like a technician or anything, so I can't thing of much right now. It could problem with the port I guess. I'm guessing you've already tried other ports already anyway.
I can't think of anything else at the moment as this hasn't really happened to me yet, the same thing happened however when I was trying to install Linux Peppermint on my USB and I accidently pulled it off during the installation. When I plugged it back to the computer it wouldnt show in My Computer etc. I ofcourse looked for guides that didn't work, and then discovered this trick while messing around in device mgr. If I think of a possible fix I'll reply.

 

[pmillen]

I know how to fix this for USB sticks it seems to be working with my phone as well.

This has happened to me plenty of times with USB sticks, and what I did to fix was:

1) Go to control panel
2) Search Device Manager in the search box and click "Device Manager" from the results
3) Expand "Disk Drives" for USB or "Portable Devices" for phones.
4) Locate your device, right click it, click "Properties", go to the "Driver" tab and click "Uninstall", which is a button located at the bottom of the window.
5) Unplug your device and plug it back in. Everything should be working just fine. (It will automatically reinstall the device software).

This uninstalls the device software which gets installed when you plug in your device for the first time. It doesn't affects the device's data.

I tried this again and it worked (at least I could see it listed with the other drives in Windows Explorer). Yay!

Thanks for the help.

 

[TheoX]

Glad that your problem has been solved!