powered hub problem

i have a powered 4 port hub , brand unknown, it was working but now unrecognized.i have tried different usb ports with no luck & if i plug my memory stick directly into a usb port on the m/b the port functions correctly.if i plug the hub into my spare pc all is ok.
now the m/b is a msi with via chipset.the device manager comes up with unknown device.
i also put in a usb 2 pci card thinking this would solve the problem but same result, as soon as i plug the hub into the knew card - not recognized error message appears.
i tried knew drivers from msi 4 in 1 pack but still nothing.
running win xp sp 2 all up to date.
any clues wuld be appreciated.


regards drew

 

In device manager, did you try a "uninstall" on the unknown device and reboot? Drivers for the hub may have been corrupted for some reason.
See if the drivers are reloaded and device recognized.

 

THX for the advice but unfortunately deleting all the usb devices in the device manager did not work, it looked promising
but after re booting it found all the new hardware & drivers and then unknown device appeared again.The pw hub has no drivers to install it just uses the windows drivers, i guess, the hub was working but it became intermittent & now nothing.i'll keep pottering away at it as most wannabe geeks don’t want to be out smarted by there own pc.

regards drew

 

I know what you mean about that.
Are all your wires in good shape , no kinks or loose connections at the hub itself? Can you swap out wires to eliminate that possibility?

 

Drew......While this is not going to help you with your actual situation, it's sounding like a situation I encountered before with XP.
A machine was brought to me for repair, because the modem would not communicate all of a sudden. The owner tried uninstalling and reinstalling the driver. Deleting the device from the device mgr and reinstalling, to no avail. It seemed XP kept reinstalling the bad driver or something. I tried his modem in 2 other XP machines, and it worked perfectly. I ended up having to put a new modem in his machine. I threw his old modem in my parts cabinet, and forgot about it.
Then about 8 months later, he wanted me to reformat his machine and reinstall XP for clean-up reasons. For the heck of it, I dug out that old modem, and tried to put it back in his machine again. No joy. It installed, but wouldn't communicate, just like before.
BUT........THEN......After I reformatted and reinstalled XP, I tried that old modem again, just for giggles. It installed and worked perfectly after the reformat.

So while this doesn't help you at all, you should be aware of oddities like that can happen.

But let me thow a few more things at ya. Make sure you have that hub plugged back into the EXACT usb port you used to have it in. I HAVE noticed if I install a usb device, then plug it into a different usb port, it will "install" the device again(for that port),the first time I use it in that other port, rather than just knowing the device, and allowing it to be used instantly.
So say you have 2 usb ports, and you are not using the original one you installed it in (we'll say port 1 was the original one). And you've plugged it into port 2 at some point, and it reinstalled. Try plugging it in port 2, and uninstalling it, THEN plug it back into the original port you first used (port 1).
Hope I didn't confuse you !!