I have a home built system and just replaced my motherboard. I did a clean install of Windows XP Pro (with SP1). I am now having a problem with USB devices which should be recognized as removable storage devices, specifically my Sony DSC-P50 camera, a USB flash memory card and SANDISK 6-in-1 reader. It is an ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe motherboard with USB 2.0 ports. The three devices worked prior to the clean install and work fine in my laptop. I know that my USB ports are working because my PALM Tungsten T3, Epson Scanner and APC UPS are working OK.
When I plug in the camera, flash or SANDISK, XP recognizes the device with the correct description of what it is. XP goes through the new hardware sequence, but fails. If I click on the USB device icon, it shows a tree with the device, disk drive below that, and then unknown device type below that. There are no special device drivers for these devices and they should all be supported by XPs built in drivers. The whole system also freezes up at that point. It comes back when I pull out the USB cable to the device.
Other times when I plug in a device, it shows as "Generic device I:", but there is no device I: showing in My Computer.
The ASUS P4C800E-Deluxe has BIOS settings related to USB mass storage devices, but they seem to be for permanent devices that need to be present at boot. They don't seem to be for removable devices, like my SANDISK 6-in-1 card reader, Sony camera, or USB flash card. The BIOS USB screen shows what devices are active and will show the external USB hub and 1, 2 or 3 disks, depending on what is plugged in. The devices fail whether plugged into the hub or directly into the motherboard.
I noticed another interesting thing. If I run the Management Console/Disk Management utility while plugging in the devices, they show up with letters for 30 seconds or so before they disappear. Even while showing in Disk Management, however, they do not appear in Explorer. After 30 seconds they disappear and the new hardware utility reported a failure installing a new device.
This started 5 days ago. Last night, the devices would actually work for a few minutes before they reverted to the symptoms mentioned above.
In the Microsoft Community newsgroups there are many descriptions of similar problems, all related to XP not working with USB mass storage devices. None of the posts, though, has a solution.
I have the feeling I will end up doing a repair install of XP, but after only 5 days, that shouldnt be necessary.
Any ideas?
Thanks,
Stan
