USB Device Not Recognized

[dgiles79]

This has been driving me crazy for a few days now, so I am hoping someone here has seen this before and found a resolution.

I have in a Compaq SR5050NX that is running Vista Home Premium 32-bit. Whenever I plug in a USB thumb drive, I get an error message "USB Device Not Recognized. One of the USB devices attached to this computer has malfunctioned and Windows does not recognize it." and in Device manager, an "Unknown Device" listing appears. A USB Mouse and keyboard work fine, just seems to be limited to USB drives.

I have made sure it has all windows patches, latest device drivers, I have uninstalled/reinstalled the USB controller, I have tried to manually update the device driver by selecting the INF folder, I have tried to manually install the USBStor inf file. I even did a full system restore and still the same issue.

I have seen a lot of people with the same issue online, but no definitive answer on how to solve it. Some people say they have found ways to resolve it, but I have tried those solutions, and none of them work for me.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[ekrizon]

Do usb drives work outside windows? Try a linux live cd.

 

[dgiles79]

I just booted to a Ubuntu Live CD and it works in there. I'm pretty sure it is a problem with Windows and the USB drivers, but I can't manually set the drivers, as it always says the best driver is already installed, even if I prompt it to search a different driver folder.

 

[Trenatos]

Back to basics.
Uninstall the driver completly, reboot, install an older version of the driver, see if that works.

 

[dgiles79]

unfortunately still the same result. I have used original and latest compaq drivers, and multiple versions directly from Intel.

 

[dgiles79]

I just found a USB 2.0 PCI card in a old parts PC, threw it in, and those ports work fine with my USB drives.

 

[B Trevathan]

Have you tried USBDeview to uninstall the USB thumb drive if it shows it has been installed? Check to see if USBDeview shows a device is connected when you know it is not and then try disabling or disconnect or uninstall it.

 

[pcoverhaul]

You could try this:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925196

 

[TenYardFight]

Anxious to hear how you solve this. I dealt with something similar the other day.

 

[Repair IT Now]

I came across the same issue a while ago. I had completely remove all the USB drivers, power reboot PC, disable on-board USB in bios, boot into windows, restart PC, re-enable on-board USB in Bios, boot into windows, install USB drivers in windows, done.

I know this seems like a strange way to fix it but it worked for me...

 

[art vandelay]

I've had good results with USBDeview too.

Interestingly, there's an "Advanced Windows" article in this month's PC Pro by Jon Honeyball on Windows not recognizing USB drives. After trying many of the above methods including USBDeview he had to reformat!! I would post a link to the article but it's not online unfortunately.

Cheers

Art