Ibleedgreen

I just re-did my uncles pc and everything is working perfectly except for the last thing that i checked out before i gave it back to him. The problem that i am having is that when i plug in a usb jump drive or an external hard drive in it pops up the message stating that it is a "unrecognizable usb device" and it does not show up in "my computer" as any normal pc would do.. i went into device manager and made sure that there are no yellow exclamation marks or anything.. all clean there.. went to dell's website and downloaded the newest chipset (that includes the usb drivers also) and still nada... He said that he was able to use his jump drive before the system crash but now that the system is wiped clean and everything started over from scratch, his jumpdrive isn't working anymore. What is really odd is that i can use his new Kodak color printer, his hp photosmart deskjet printer, his Olympus camera just fine on his usb ports, it's just his jump drive and my external hard drive that are being unrecognizable everything else works great.. I am so cornfused over this i had to turn to the experts here to see if there was any solution out there? Help anybody?! Really apreciated!... this sucks because im a full time technician and haven't seen anything like this.. it has to be a driver issue or something..

Punktech

Go to msconfig and disable all the services and start up items and restart and try the drives. Lets see what happens.

smz

FYI: I went to the dell home page and got a link to support for your Dimension 4550. It is showing me the last release of the intel chipset drivers was in 2002. Is that the one you downloaded?

Here's the latest from Intel dated November 2006

Granted this may have nothing to do with it. But I had a user recently solve a USB hub problem by installing this latest Intel update as opposed to the latest from the manufacturer which you can easily see is not up to date.

Give that a shot for kicks. If this isn't the answer, I'm sure there are plenty of other avenues to go down.

Ibleedgreen

Great... Will try that later tonight when i get home from work to see if that fixes the issue with the jump drive and the external drive. Yes.. that is where i went to download the chipset drivers (dells support page, 2002 drivers). Just didn't cross my mind right away to go onto intels actual website to find updated ones..
will post later to see if it solved the issue..

-Jason

Ibleedgreen

UGGGH! I tried that intel chipset link last night and that didn't seem to work either.. i had him install it and then reboot and try it and still nada... any other suggestions? i am going to try and put his original factory restore cd's in and see if there is any other application that i missed before giving it back to him.. hopefully there will be something on there for that issue..

MaverickUK

Hi,

Can you go to start, run and type "devmgmt.msc" without the quotations. Once done, look for yellow exclamation or question marks, pay particular attention to "Universal Serial Bus" sub-category - are there none next to USB Root Hub?

Nick.

Ibleedgreen

thats the thing.. i did exactly what you are talking about and when the jumpdrive is plugged in and i look under the "universal serial bus controllers" + sign it it says that it is a mass "storage device" with no yellow exclamation signs. It still does not show up in "my computer" as a kingston travel device.. this is really really awkward because i was working on another pc the other day that is the same exact model and everything and my jumpdrive works on that one.. it has be some kind of drivers from the orignal cd that probably still needs installed or something..

MaverickUK

You may have USB 1.1 ports and a USB 2.0 external drive, check to make sure you are not trying to use one on the other. Does the drive use external power or is it solely using USB bus power? (I doubt it will be using solely USB).

If you have more than one USB device in the system, remove them all and have just the USB drive connected to the system, this will rule out it being a USB bus power issue.

Next try the following; If the device is found under Universal Serial Bus controllers or Other Devices, then remove the device from Device Manager, disconnect the USB device, restart the computer, and install the USB device software following the manufacturer's guidelines.

The next thing to try is to go to BIOS and use "Load Optimal Defaults", very unlikely to solve the issue but it is still none the less a possibility. If none of the above or below work, i'm completely lost but i will still help you as we progress in this thread.

Make sure that USB 2.0 is enabled in your BIOS menu, if not, change these settings and save/exit.If none of the above is the issue and no other USB device works in the USB slots, try the below fix:

Create a file with NOTEPAD containing the following lines and save it as FIX.REG
-------------------------- Use text after this line --------------------------------
REGEDIT4

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment]

"DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES"="1"
-------------------------- Use text before this line --------------------------------

Double click on FIX.REG and say yes to the Merge Into Registry question.

Unplug ALL USB devices.
Open Device Manager by using "devmgmt.msc" in run.
View, Show Hidden Devices.
Uninstall all devices under USB Controllers.
Uninstall all devices under Disk Drives that you know are not present.
Uninstall all devices under Storage Volumes. Say no to any reboot prompts until you are finished. Also, if a Storage Volume doesn't uninstall, ignore it and move to the next one.
If you have a yellow ? with unknown devices, uninstall all of the entries there as well.

When this is done, reboot TWICE.

Reconnect the USB devices and see if they're recognized properly.

NOTE: If you have a USB keyboard and/or mouse, you'll have to modify the instructions and leave enough parts for those to function. I don't have one yet, so I haven't had time to modify the instructions.

Nick.

MaverickUK

Oops, i noticed you can actually get other USB devices working on the system so i wouldn't really suggest the USB fix, i can't edit my post ahh.

smz

hey mav is it possible that this jump drive has a similar issue that happens with hard drives where the partition table of the drive is fried? The only way you fix that on a physical hard drive is a low level format. I'm not sure if there is such a thing for a flash drive but seems like something I wouldn't rule out at this point.

MaverickUK

To be honest, i don't have a lot of knowledge on jump drives but i guess this could be possibility - it's something we can look into. Also, what exactly is a jump drive? Just a normal USB stick that holds data? I've never heard the expression before

Nick.

smz

I'm not sure if the original user abandoned ship or not. Jump drive is a fancy name for flash drive, or USB key... Some manufacturers like to name it something fancy. Like Sandisk calls their product a Cruzer.

Ibleedgreen

Have a solution!!.. i was running accross some articles on the internet and i ran accross one that said something about trying to turn your usb printer off to see if it was conflicting with the ports on the front of the computer. The first thing that i did tonight was head to best buy and buy a usb 2.0 usb port 4-port hub. Took that to my uncles house and plugged that in right away and saw that the usb thumbdrive worked.. at the same time i noted that the printer was turned off.... sooo i turned the usb printer (newly purchased kodak printer) on and guess what.. the front usb ports didn't work anymore and the the thumbdrive stopped working. scratching my head thinking to myself.. now why in the world does the printer and the front usb ports conflict with each other. So.. The usb 2.0 4-port had a power source to the hub and i thought to myself.. why not and try and plug in the printer not only to the wall but plug the printer's usb connection into the hug (another power supply for the printer) and then try the thumbdrive.. Wala.. the extra power source for the printer is giving it some extra oomph so that the ports on the front can still work.. becasue when i turned the printer off and plugged the thumdrive into the front usb ports, the thumdrive worked... here is the link to the powered usb 2.0 hub that i used..

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....=1134698054114

Thanks everybody for the help..

smz

That solution came out of left field but we'll take it. WOW... Sometimes you can rack up all the brain power you can handle and still come up dry. Look at the final result. W2G