USB ports not working

I'm having trouble with a friend's machine. All the USB ports have stopped working. I have checked BIOS settings, uninstalled and reinstalled drivers, reset the CMOS. I have now added a PCI USB card, which installed fine and worked at first (I could read a thumb drive), but then stopped working when I added the printer.

I've also checked that there is no malware on the sytem and posted logs here which were clear. I'd be grateful for any advice.

 

Hi there,

I hope that you are using windows XP hehe, I have attached an image let us knw what you see there ok?

Click on Start> Right Click on My Computer and click on properties.> Click on hardware tab> click on device manager and see the image and let us know what you see below the "universal Serial Bus Contollers".

You can also right click on the USB host contollers and uninstall them and restart the computer and check.

 

TimW - The box allowing them to be put to sleep was checked, but the first thing I tried was unchecking it.

ciaoxp - I've tried uninstalling the host controllers several times. They reinstall fine with no conflicts showing in Device Manager. Unfortunately the actual ports still don't work.

 

If you uninstall the printer do the USB ports on the add-in card work again?

From what I gather, the computer has USB ports that don't work and USB ports on a card that also do not work. Is that correct? You also did not state what OS is on the computer. A brand and model of the computer would help because there might be some updated drivers to fix problems.

 

I haven't tried reinstalling the printer since adding the PCI card. I will try that over the weekend (it is my friend's machine so I do not have it at home).

OS is XP Home SP2. PC is non-branded. Mobo is ECS K7S5A. He's now also told me that when he shuts down there are 2 windows updates to install. They seem to install fine during shutdown, but then they are there again the next time he shuts down. Could this be related to the USB problem?

Thanks again for the help.

 

When I built my first pc I had problems with usb and it took a while for me to discover that when I had mounted my Motherboard in the case and pressed it up against the cases metal back plate I had inadvertently got one of the plates metal springy things inside one of the usb plugs. It had obviously caused a short but didn't fail until I plugged something into that specific port. From that point on none of the ports worked right until I found the problem.