usb advice needed

usb device not recognised is what i get when i plug in my maxtor external hard drive or my iphone, or hubbys seagate hard drive, we have changed motherboard, changed windows from xp to 7, we have formatted the hard drive inbetween changing from xp to 7 dont know what else to do, gonna have to put it to a shop soon if i cant fix this problem, all my work on hard drive

 

Greetings, settler...

I'm assuming you've tried the classic fix for this problem: power down the computer, unplug it, wait several minutes, and then power everything up...it's surprising how often this procedure works with unrecognized USB devices...

 

yes it has been going on for months and months but i uploaded all the updates for windows 7 and it worked, i got all my work on to the computer thought ok ill try restarting computer see if it still works, no same problem doesnt recognize it

 

Do you see any USB controllers in your Device Manager? Any yellow flags there?

 

only when hard drive plugged in, says device unknown, i just downloaded all the window updates, it worked once got all my work on to my computer yea, then thought ok restart computer see if its a one off and yes it is, back to unknown device

 

Windows has stopped this device because it has reported problems. (Code 43)

 

i'd next try uninstalling the USB drivers in device manager, then reboot. And set a restore point first.

 

It is not enough to reboot the computer. As Caliban mentioned unplug the computer from the electric outlet. Let it unplugged for 5 min. to an hour. For some reason that resets things and the USB ports work again.

 

yep every night, still dont work in the morning, in fact today has been the first time it worked in months i was backing everything up through our home network hard drive connect to laptop, took hours