Laptop USB Ports all unresponsive

This is so strange, I don't know if I'm seeing hardware failure or a virus, or a data error, or what... I'm going to start by posting this is "software", but it's certainly open to revision!

With NOTHING plugged into an open USB port the "Unrecognized device" message pops up every few seconds - and nothing is recognized when I do plug something in...


This is going to be a litle long, so bear with me.

Some background:

I use USB "thumb drives" - I'll call them USBTDs - a lot. Well, about three of them, anyway. Mostly, I have a 4GB Sandisk with Portable Apps on it, which I use for my personal email accounts with Thunderbird. It also has Foxfire, Open Office, and some other stuff, and I also have a Documents directory which I use for moving files - mostly Office docs and sheets, but some text, pdf, and html stuff too. Recently, I started trying out "d-cubed" which is a TiddlyWiki-based "Getting Things Done" app that runs itself entirely out of a single html file - pretty neat gadget, but not well-documented... I use it to supplement my standard pile-of-index-cards approach to portable To-Do lists.

So, I recently bought via Amazon, through one of their subs (I'll dig up the name if it looks like an issue) a couple of 16GB Sandisk USBTDs. Although I don't have the packaging now, they looked authentic, so may not be anything to worry about.

Yesterday, I thought it might be a good idea to go ahead and start using the 16GB drives, so - on my Toshiba L350 laptop (WinXP Pro) - I unmounted the 4GB one and stuck in the 16GB. It said it was unrecognized, try again. I pulled it out, stuck it back in, and this time it saw the Sandisk standard U3 (I *&#@$ HATE U3!) and asked if I wanted to load the software on my computer or what? I got interrupted, and when I got back, the dialog box was gone. I dunno what happened. I unmounted the thing and tried again. This time I said No, and it asked if I wanted to disable U3 on the drive; Yes to that, and it went ahead. After it got done, I checked to see what it had on it (I like Total Commander more than Windows Explorer, because I do a lot of moving and copying, and it's a lot easier to do that with TC). Anyway, the contents looked good (RestoreU3 and a directory or two of other stuff that I didn't look at)... and around that time I discovered my mouse wasn't working (I forgot to mention that I almost always - in the desktop situation, run laptops with a USB mouse and keyboard). The keyboard wasn't working, either. I unplugged and plugged them back in, and got a message about unknown or unrecognized USB device. I tried to unmount the 16GB drive, but now it wasn't found, either. I unplugged all three USB devices, and the "unrecognized USB device" started popping up every few seconds, even with nothing plugged in. When I went to the "click here to fix", I got a box showing a USB root hub with eight devices, with the third one saying Unrecognized (or unknown) device - I'm thinking this is the single plug on the right side, where I usually plug in a USBTD.

I went through everything I could think of - rebooting from power off, restoring default BIOS, going to a yesterday restore point... nothing helped. Called Toshiba Tech support (this one is still under warranty), but no help there either. They kicked it up to level two tech support, which will call me back shortly, about eighteen hours ago. Since it's Saturday, I'm not holding my breath for that.

I discovered that the built-in camera also doesn't work (I'm pretty sure it's a USB device).

I was kind of thinking that the USB drivers' data tables (prolly in registry somewhere) have gotten hosed to the point of not being able to recover, but a few minutes ago I thought I'd install Ccleaner and see if it found anything... but the CD/DVD drive doesn't work now - or at least, it doesn't see my CD with all the tools on it, that every other computer I've just tried has no trouble with. I've unplugged the ethernet and disabled the wifi, in case that 16GB drive infected this computer, I'd just as soon it didn't spread through my LAN.

At this point, I'd reinstall Windows, except that I don't have a Win XP disk or proprietary drivers for the damn thing. I got it with a $100 "downgrade" from Vista to XP Pro, but the bastards didn't include XP disks or drivers with it. No doubt I can get them, some day, but in the meantime, I'd really like to get it working (the only other problem I ever had with it - back in December - also got kicked up to level two, and two hours with them on phone and remote logging in did zero good. They also promised to call back shortly, and I'm still waiting for that call - fortunately, I kept poking, and fixed it myself - someone else posted the same problem on their forum, and I was able to pass the solution along - full acceleration on the display).

So... any ideas? I'm open to just about anything... I'd like to find something on any USB entries in the registry and see if something there might break it loose. Right this instant, the laptop's been in "Windows is shutting down" mode for about an hour, so I'm gonna go pull the plug and let it die, then start back up and see if the CD/DVD drive works now. If it does, I'll get right back here with an update.

 

Phew! Good yarn!!
You haven't mentioned looking in your Device Manager. Have you tried uninstalling your USB drivers from there and rebooting (for an automatic reinstall)?

Any yellow ! or ?, or red X in Device Manager?

Sounds like you have other probs as well though (CD read and shutdown).

Maybe try an earlier restore point, as well?

 

Yeah, it's a strange one. I'm still not much closer to deciding if it's a hardware fail or just corrupted drivers.

Interestingly, after I rebooted, the CD/DVD drive came back, and I got CCleaner installed and cleaned up the registry some - at least it shut down without having to power off afterwards.

However, I also got a couple of "Delayed Write Error" messages, and a couple of corrupted files from AVG. AVG may be a problem, too, and I just installed 9.0 over 8.5 it the previous day, and on the subsequent reboot got another "You need to update" message from the 8.5 which theoretically had just been removed... tried to remove AVG 9.0 so I could reinstall it, but it refused, something about a missing DLL I think. The AVG forum said to get and run an "avg-remover", but I haven't had a chance to do that yet.

I haven't gotten to the DM yet, mainly because I'm installing a new SonicWall, working around needed office access. I was hoping to be able to upload the saved config from the old one, but the OS is different, so no soap - I'm editing in IP address / MAC address pairs for fifty-odd PCs, which will continue Sunday, and then I have to configure three separate "groups" with slightly different content filters for each group. I wanted to use the laptop for this, since it's easier to carry it down to the phone room where the SonicWalls live instead of running back and forth swapping plugs, but...

I'm hoping the un/re-install of USB drivers will work, but since I don't have any disks for XP, I'm probably not going to cross that bridge until I can make sure the drivers can be downloaded handily.... Toshiba has a zillion *&@#$ models - the tech support even got the model wrong despite the fact that I corrected him three times ("No, 'Mark', it's not an L305, it's L350."). We'll see...

I appreciate the response, thanks.

 

Not sure if I'm missing something here, but you should be able to just uninstall the USB drivers and they will automatically reinstall when you reboot, n'est-ce pas?

 

I have seen this problem, and often when plugging usb drives in/out, and the laptops I had showed a warning to reenable, or, loose the usb port.
I downloade this fixit tool from microsoft, and it worked on one.
aAlso instructions on how to go about re-enabling them yourself.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/817900

 

You're right, but I did it already. Came back exactly the same. The camera/mic is a USB device, which gets lost when all USB get uninstalled, but is found on reboot. I'm still thinking there's a registry entry that's hosed and can't get reset or an entry in a data file that's locked and can't be erased... or maybe the driver's just boned.

I don't think it's viral, just something got windozed. I'm leaning toward the locked file or registry entry that doesn't get deleted when the device is uninstalled... the saga continues.

Thanks for the response - I certainly appreciate it.

 

Try this:
Remove all USB devices and then uninstall the USB controllers.
Then re-install your motherboard chipset drivers.

 

Any progress with GCWest suggestion?
If not perhaps this link...
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/871233

 

Haven't had a chance to try either of the last two things... up to my *** in complaints about the new Content Filter - "we HAVE to go to walmart.com and target.com to buy office supplies..." Will report back. I'll try the tool first, and if that doesn't work, then the chipset, but not sure where do get the chipset drivers, as Toshiba didn't bother to include a disk with proprietary drivers.

Thanks for the ideas!

 

Just did a search on your laptop (toshiba l350 chipset driver). A number of possibilities came up, including at Toshiba:
http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/tais/support/jsp/modelContent.jsp?origin=new&ct=DL

 

SOLVED: Laptop USB Ports all unresponsive

FINAL RESOLUTION:

0. Shut down the computer
1. Pull the power plug
2. Remove the battery
3. Press the ON button and hold it for 30 seconds.
4. Put the battery back in.
5. Connect the power
6. Start the computer.

That's it... took a couple of reboots, but all the USB ports came back and all the devices connected, one at a time.

I thought I'd done this, but I was wrong. I skipped the step of removing the battery... although I DID pull the power and let it bleed all the way down, overnight. And I didn't think of trying to turn it on with no power, no battery.

I have a feeling this will work for a host of problems with device ports. It's so simple that it ought to be at the top of port troubleshooting lists.

 

That was going to be my next suggestion. :-D


Congratulations! Take a promotion!
Thanks for posting the solution, too.
Interesting thought about putting it at the top of the troubleshooting list. It's easy enough to try as an early option - but there is no list. Funnily enough, I just mused about the benefits of such a list in another post the other day. Wouldn't hold my breath - it would be so difficult to do. Maybe someone could start one and just let it grow.:confused

P.S. Do you happen to have equivalent instructions for a PC - or maybe PC's don't have that problem...

 

You know, that was exactly what I told the Super-Level Tech at Toshiba - dammit, this is so simple and so easy and so quick that it should be one of the very first things to try - it oughta be on the help screen of Rajneesh who answers the phone first, not something you get to three days later!

Whatever... All's well that ends well...

 

As for the existence of "the list", ask me about the Reeko Vary.

Unless the help-desk paradigm has changed, there is in fact a "list" - at least of sorts - in that a majority of the poor schlubs at "tech support" are filling in blanks on a screen and reading the "next item" and telling you to try that. Assuming that to be the case, I would think it fairly simple to add the shutdown and bleed the caps step pretty close to the front - since they did in fact have a "power off" step, and it would be damned simple to add the "unplug power cord, remove battery, hold down ON button and count slowly to 30, put the battery back in, plug the power cord, and start it up" - it would add less than a minute to the step.

The power-off completely is good for desktops, too - I've used it a lot, for strange connection problems (NICs, printers) although I never thought of pressing the ON switch... I usually just shut down, disconnect everything including the power cord and wait a minute or two before re-connecting and re-starting. Given this result, I think - again - adding the "press the ON switch and hold it down for a good while with the power cord still unplugged" would be a damned good idea.

 

What's the Reeko Vary?

Good point well made! :-D

I've done that too a couple of times, come to think of it (although without disconnecting the power cord), but also without the ON switch step. We may be on the cusp of a REVOLUTION!! ON switchers of the world UNITE!!! :-D

 

YES- well on the way to being a real geek,shorttex.
On a laptop, you will still have residual power while the battery is in, so by removing it, then pressing the button, you drained it, as you do on a pc, when you pull the plug out,and hold the button down.

Well done:highfive

 

One of the unintelligible sounds that came from the "support" "technician" was a question about whether I was having the Reeko Vary. I was pretty sure the phones aren't transmitting odors - yet - so I was having a lot of difficulty trying to figure out what he was asking.

After having him repeat it two or three times, I gave up and asked him to spell it:

R - E -C - O - V - E - R - Y

"You Reeko Vary, Sir. Are you having you Reeko Vary?" (No, because when Toshiba graciously sold me the "downgrade" to XP Pro for only $100, they didn't bother to include either an XP Sticker or XP Disks, only the Vista sticker and disks).

 

:-D:cryLOLroflmao:foolish
I think that should about do it!

 

No... it still needs a couple more of these:
roflmaoroflmao