Operating System: XP Pro SP1. My boss connected his Palm Pilot to the front usb port of his computer. The computer froze.
He cold booted it and it would not recognize his usb mouse. There was no light to the optical led. I used a PS2 mouse and checked the device manager. It shows "unknown device" whenever any usb device is installed in any usb port, front or back. It does not show a yellow error. I uninstalled and reinstalled the usb drivers and and the problem remains the same. I did a sfc /scannow to no effect. I did notice that there is no " generic usb hub" listed. Any ideas on what I can try next.
Thanks
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Yes, I have uninstalled and reinstalled all the usb hubs. When checking drivers they appear to all be in the right place in the "System32" folder. I might mention that when a device " mouse. flash drive, etc" is installed, the device manager constantly refreshes itself until the the device is removed.
no, that I have not done. Windows updates are up to date through SUS. All of the computers here are from the same manufacturer (MPC). Some are still SP1 though, as is this one. Do you think it could have something to do with the Palm software? I don't know when he installed it as I gave it to him only recently.
That was my next thought. I will have to wait for his okay though. (he is the the boss). I can't think of any thing else it could be. You know, "what changed recently?" thing. I guess that is all I can do tonight until I talk with him tomorrow, unless something I am missing come to mind. If it does please post, I will be here for awhile and if not I will get back tomorrow.
Thanks
I did the unhide thing and there is nothing showing that is abnormal. I did a System Restore, but did not go back far enough as I did not know when he installed the Palm software. I went back further and was able to get the usb mouse back, but under Human Interface. When doing a search I found that the usbstor.sys(the mass storage one) was nowhere to be found. I copied one from an identical pc in put it in System32/drivers. It is there but not working. Any ideas?
This is where I am at right now. I have tried everything suggested up to now without success. Before doing a complete reinstall I would like to try one more thing. Can anyone tell me the correct way to copy a system file (in this case "usbstor.sys") correctly into System32\drivers. I believe I did it incorrectly. Can someone give the correct way of doing this in a step by step way. I would like to try this before reinstalling and would the usbstore.inf file need to be overwritten also?
I have nothing to lose at this point and maybe something to learn.
Thanks,dmcalert
have you tried add new hardware then choose OTHER and select from?
Your boss should appreciate your efforts to fix the problem and give you free run :)
Maybe the palm shorted out the system somehow, is this system support usb2?
>>The computer froze
Or the usb slot is malfunctioning, do you have two or more usb slots?
>>There was no light to the optical led.
Is this Palm compatible with windowsxp sp1?
here is a list of Palm Pilot
http://en.wikipedia.org/wi
SP2 installs the support for more usb devices.
does your boss have an xpro setup disc?
run repair/re-install of xp sp1 then upgrade it to sp2
as the support for xps1 ended on the 10th October 2006.
Sp2 is free and any cd can be used.
perform a reinstallation of Windows XP, sometimes called a repair installation?
Configure your computer to start from the CD-ROM drive. Then insert your Windows XP Setup CD, and restart your computer.
When the Press any key to boot from CD message is displayed on your screen, press a key to start your computer from the Windows XP CD.
Press ENTER when you see the message To setup Windows XP now, and then press ENTER displayed on the Welcome to Setup screen.
Do not choose the option to press R to use the Recovery Console.
In the Windows XP Licensing Agreement, press F8 to agree to the license agreement.
Make sure that your current installation of Windows XP is selected in the box, and then press R to repair Windows XP.
Follow the instructions on the screen to complete Setup.
Get Your PC Ready for Windows XP SP2
http://www.microsoft.com/w
order the free cd
http://www.microsoft.com/w
http://www.microsoft.com/w
I found this browsing around EE it may also help
EE is an amazing place like a huge space of galaxies of subjects unreal.
http://www.experts-exchang
To giive you an update as of now I have done everything suggested up to the repair, including updating to SP2. I have the SP2 disk and a VLK XP Pro cd. I ususally make an image and deploy it to a workstation via Altiris. USB are all 2.0.
I have installed the Palm on my computer today with no problems. I also installed it on his MacBookPro without a problem. He tried his hand at it on the computer in question without my knowledge. Somewhere at the end of this install is when usb ceased to function. It is a special program using Palm and FilemakerPro mobile to use for personnel evaluations that management is going to be using.
The usbs (there are 6 "4 in back and 2 in front") all respond the same. If I put a flash drive in it, the led on the flash drive will light for a moment and then go dead.. I put a card reader in to the ports that has a small led on it and it stays lit but nothing shows up in "My Computer" and in device manager it says "unknown device". Under drivers it says " no drivers loaded for this device". So at this point I am assuming that it is a driver problem but have not ruled out a hardware issue.
And yes, I believe my boss does appreciate my efforts. That's why I am going the extra mile on this one.
And if anyone can tell me how to correctly copy a system file from cache or cd to System32, I woukd apppreciate it. I am not sure I did that correctly. The file in question appears to be usbstor.sys (mass storage driver).
I do appreciate all your responses,
dmcalert
to restore this file, you have to do this:
restore the file usbstor.inf to the folder c:\windows\INF
then restore the file usbstor.sys to c:\windows\system32\driver
You can get copies of these files here: http://www.usb-drivers.com
or you can find them on your XP disk under i386\usbstor.in_ and the usbstor.sys file can be found in the drivers.cab file on your XP installation disk.
unfortunately, many usb cases are only resolved with a frsh install, but let's try the other possibilities first.
here an article from the net :
----
However I recently discovered that Windows has a 'magic' setting in the registry to help us deal with rogue manufacturers who assign a single serial number to all instances of a particular product. You know that you have such a problem product when you plug two of them into Windows XP and it reboots as soon as the second device is enumerated.
To work around this you can create a binary key in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\
that has the form
IgnoreHWSerNumVVVVPPPP. Here VVVV is the 4 hex digits of the vendor id and PPPP is the 4 digits of the product id.
Creating this and setting the value to 01 means that windows will ignore the serial number and act as if the device never had one at all. Doing this causes windows to then use the connection number to discriminate between different devices which works fine.
just a repair install dmcalert should not alter your files. You'll need the cd key. plus run soem updates. If you have sp2 installed as a separate upgrade try uninstalling it from add remove programs.
Reinstall.
If you have a full sp2 xp go ahead with teh repiar install but dont use recovery console.
Is his computer a desktop or laptop.
Well, guess what. I decided this morning to eliminate the hardware / OS concern I was having a different way. Since I had identical machines available, I did a motherboard swap. All usb ports worked. I upgraded his machine to SP2. I guess somehow the usb host controller shorted out and was not enumerating the device and loading the driver. I want to thank all of you for your input. I would like to split the points as all suggestions were helpful and will be in the future.
So if you concur, I would like to split this way:
Merete: did mention about usb shorting and other excellent info. 300 points (Accepted)
Bartender_1: answering my file copy question. 100 points (Assisted)
nobus: for your registry info: 100 points (Assisted)
Please let me know if you concur.
dmcalert
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by: Bartender_1Posted on 2006-11-28 at 16:21:34ID: 18033193
Have you tried right clicking on the USB hub(s) in the device manager, and selecting uninstall?
Then reboot the system to try to allow it to autodetect them again.
Hope this helps!
:o)
Bartender_1