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USB Drives Not Recognized

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Shane:
On the tower have you tired plugging the hub into a different USB port?

Reason why I ask is a lot of hubs pull the power they need from the USB ports (instead of a power cable). Sometimes a USB port can start to go bad and not give the power it needs. You can tell this by simply using a different port.

I want to cover all bases before we start digging into drivers :-D

Shane

crysridge:
Yes, I have tried that.  I have also tried plugging the HD in several different ports.  I also tried flash drives in both tower and netbook.  Everything works in the netbook but not in the tower.  And, as I stated, everything was working in the tower until the last several days.  WOW !

I can work around this by using multiple computers.

Brian

Shane:
I just had to replace a motherboard for a customer because all the USB stopped working, didn't work even after a fresh windows or Linux install. So I knew they where dead.

We need to find out if it is windows or if your USB has died.

One way we can do this is by downloading the Ubuntu Linux live cd. It allows you to boot Linux off the CD. From there you can see if the USB works correctly. If it does then we know it is windows, if it doesn't then we know it is the motherboard :wink:

Shane

crysridge:
OK - latest update !  I ran Ubuntu Live.  The hub was recognized just fine.  I plugged in a flash drive in both the tower and the hub.  It worked just fine in both.  I plugged the USB HD in both.  It was immediately recognized through the hub but not directly through the tower.

As it receives its power from the unit it is plugged into, could it be it is not getting enough power directly from the tower ?  I do have a very good power supply for the equipment I have (585 watts) and this was not a problem previously.  The hub is powered directly from a power outlet.

This would still indicate to me that there is a problem with Windows.  What do you think ?

Thanks for all,
Brian

Shane:
Odd the USB drive did power through the tower but I am sure it is fine.

But the fact that it behaved WAY better in Ubuntu does make it seem like it is a windows problem :wink:

So here a trick with Windows that I do.

1. Open the device manager (Normally better to do this in safe mode)
2. Go to advanced and click on show hidden devices
3. Now go through the USB devices and removed all the transparent entries first then remove all the rest.
4. Reboot, Windows will now reload all the USB devices and install the drivers again.

I have had to do this for customers when there USB mouse or camera stopped working, removing it from the device manger and letting Windows reinstall it was the trick. Might work for you as well :wink:

Shane

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