USB port issues

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blacklab

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I have a dell desktop with 6 USB ports. I have an Seagate external harddrive with it's own power supply. I installed a HP laserjet printer P1006 with its own power supply as well. When I try to hook the printer to the computer I get USB errors saying it is malfunctioning and can not reconnize the device. The computer will not allow me to connect both devices I have to do one or the other but can not connect both without one not working. Why is this happening???

Thanks,
Dave
 
blacklab said:
I have a dell desktop with 6 USB ports. I have an Seagate external harddrive with it's own power supply. I installed a HP laserjet printer P1006 with its own power supply as well. When I try to hook the printer to the computer I get USB errors saying it is malfunctioning and can not reconnize the device. The computer will not allow me to connect both devices I have to do one or the other but can not connect both without one not working. Why is this happening???

Thanks,
Dave
Click to expand...


have you tried updating the drivers,
 
The Seagate does not require drivers according to their website they are with the Windows OS.... and the printer is brand new out of the box so it should not need new drivers.. It appears to be some kind of conflict with the USB ports but I am lost on why it is happening... I have gone to Seagates website and found nothing also nothing at HP site...
 
Have you tried plugging the devices into different usb ports? You probably have 2 USB ports right on the mother board and then a few USB ports on it's own card or right on the front of your computer. If you have not already, try using just the ports on the motherboard, then try using one on the motherboard and one on the card, then try using both just on the card and see what kind of result you get.

Also, what drivers did you install for the HP printer? If you installed the HP bundled software, that might be your issue. HP software tends to do whatever it wants and only cares about the HP device installed on the machine. I try not to install any software by HP - Instead, just go to control panel and add the printer from there. Download only the basic drivers from HP to get the printer to work.
 
Last edited:
Yes that was my first guess to try the ports in the front vs back however I get the very same result no matter what USB ports I try to use. At first I did try to install the HP printer without the software CD and got the following error message when I connected the printer and turned it on: One of the USB devices attached to this device has failed and Windows does not recognize it.

So at that point I tried several things and nothing worked until I unplugged the Seagate external drive then the system would recongnize the printer.

Then I plugged the external drive back in and got the same error message this time for the drive. So something is stopping the system from allowing two USB devices to be attached at once on the computer... even if I try different USB ports...
 
How much RAM is in the system? I had a customer with a similar problem. She had bought a brand new HP printer and installed it and all of a sudden her USB flash drives wouldn't work. She only had 512mb of RAM on her system so I recommended an upgrade and when I installed a 1gb stick the system would recognize the usb flash drives. Just a thought.
 
Good point! If there is not enough RAM, the system will choose what device to use at it's discretion. I has a similar issue with a client where the lack of RAM caused all sorts of issues.
 
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It has 1gb of ram so that should be okay but I did not think about the motherboard firmware... I will go to Dell's website and update the firmware and let you guys know if that takes care of the problem...

Dave
 
It's a good practice to use the same brand/size/speed RAM in a computer - I know that using a (1) GB stick and (1) 512 stick together works but in order to get the full speed of the memory, i would use (2) 512 sticks or (2) 1GB sticks of the same kind for the best results.

What else do you have connected to the computer?

Computer Repair in New Jersey
DKNJ Networks - For ALL Your Computer Needs...
 
nj_computer_repair said:
It's a good practice to use the same brand/size/speed RAM in a computer - I know that using a (1) GB stick and (1) 512 stick together works but in order to get the full speed of the memory, i would use (2) 512 sticks or (2) 1GB sticks of the same kind for the best results.

Oh I know that, especially if you want the dual channel to work properly but I wasn't concerned about that. This was a customer that wasn't using the system for much other then word processing and surfing the net, and printing pictures.
Click to expand...
 
Well I updated the firmware etc and the problem is still there. I can not get the two devices to work at the same time on my USB ports. I have to turn off one of the other... this is driving me nuts there has to be a solution out there somewhere??? I think 1gb of RAM should be more than efficent to allow both devices to work at the same time..
 
Plug the printer in the back usb port, the one that is on the port cover plate over the board inputs. Plug the drive into a front side port.
Frankly though I've seen trouble with those seagate drives.
 
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