Sardoniscorn

Hello all,

After recently fixing some hardware problems with my new PC, It was running fine until i came across a new problem (Running Vista Home Premium 32-bit.)

It seems any USB Device, such as memory sticks, external HDs and my iPod, just aren't recognized by Vista. When I plug them into any USB port i get the option to search the internet for drivers.. which are never found.

I recently flashed BIOS to its latest version and am running the latest version of iTunes, so i don't know where the problem can be. When i open Device manager they are listed under "Other Devices" with the Yellow "!" and the message "The drivers were not successfully installed."

Also, an unrelated problem is the fact that a phantom A: drive has appeared under "Computer", despite the PC not actually having a physical floppy drive. It wasn't there before... one day it just.... appeared. Whats the deal?

Any help would be appreciated

Cheers,

Sardoniscorn

Well..... bump....

Recently I tried to use my Digital Camera, which never required any drivers in the past, and Vista rejects it as well. This is getting rather annoying..

Choto Cheeta

Try and obtain the USB Patch for Vista for your self... you may run an auto update.. or you may download manually...

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/936003

Sardoniscorn

I installed the USB patch and ran WIndows Update, but alas USB devices still refuse to work properly. Strangely enough, my iPod sometimes works when i have it plugged in as i'm turning on the computer, but never when i plug it in while Windows is running.

Thanks again for your help,

Bling

Did you install Vista or did it come with the computer? (I just had my computer fixed, and they forgot to "tattoo" it to the new motherboard, and I lost connections too. Back it went to be fixed again. . .)

Monty Python

Okay first do ANY USB devices work?

HAVE any USB devices EVER worked ?

If yes, more than likely you have hardware conflicts. Removable drives/media cause problems with drive letter names and other problems. I make a point of manually assigning drive letter names to each device that are far away from C:\, D:\, etc...

Unplug all USB devices. Uninstall EVERYTHING to do with USB in Device Manager, and restart.

Then, plug in the most reliable USB device you have, and report results here.

Sardoniscorn

Well... I think that the problem might have been Vista not looking in the correct directory to install the drivers. From what i gather, setting Vistato look for drivers in "C:\Windows\System32" should resolve the issue.

However, i get a shiny new error message when I try to do this.
http://img507.imageshack.us/my.php?image=usbaw6.jpg

And now, for some reason, I'm getting a "Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware" error for the SCSI/RAID Controller. Which worked fine before.

It seems I'm left with no other option but to reinstall Vista, even though I've only had it for a couple of weeks.

However, what i'm perplexed by is the fact that USB devices worked perfectly if i plugged them in before i powered up the PC. Now they dont seem to do that anymore.

EDIT: Oh and i've installed that Windows hotfix to no avail. And no drives show up in "Disk Management" even when plugged in.