USB drives problem

Hey everyone,

I hope u can help me with this crazy issue i ran into. here are my PC's specs:
==========================
nForce 680i SLI (bios33) not OC'ed
Intel QX6800 Proc
RAM 8gb
GeForce GTX8800
Running: Windoes 7 x64 Pro
Just updated to 15.53 BETA drivers due to the problem i was having
WD 500Gb x2 on RAID 0
==========================

This problem is driving me insane. About a few weeks ago, my computer stopped recognizing my USB drives, flash drives, ipod, GPS, or phone. it will identify them as being plugged in but they won't show up on the disk manager and in the device manager they have the "!" sign.
Other PC's DO recognize all this devices.
Here's something weird, one of my External Hard Drives has a partition that WILL show up. it is one of those partitions configured as a CD/DVD. (this is a Western Digital drive, the partition is called WD SmartWare)
Now, at first I thought it was a problem with windows drivers but then I was gonna try booting from my USB thumbdrive and it turns out that it won't recognize it either. I KNOW... my MoBo won't recognize my thumbdrive, that's INSANE. So this has driven me to think that the problem may be related to the motherboard and not windows. I updated my BIOS to P33 but it didn't help.
I have tried reinstalling the drivers multiple times and that doesn't help.
I was gonna replace the disk.sys file with the one from another win7 machine but I can't do it. the file is locked down and I can't replace it neither in normal mode nor safe mode. I was gonna use mini windows XP to replace it but because my hard drives are on RAID they won't show up in there.
Mini windows XP does see my thumbdrives which is also pretty weird...

I ran out of ideas so I hope any1 out there has another possible solution.

P.S.: don't recommend me basic stuff like "unplugging n plugging back in" OR "turn off the PC for 30 sec"... nothing like that will solve it.

Thanks

 

any1??? c'mon =(
a friend of mine just suggested me to use USBDeview but it didn't help either

 

In the device manager, there should be an error code by the "!" symbol. And can you right click on this and look for solutions under the various tabs? Under the detail tab, can you explore the multitude of properties?

One solution may be to just restore your system to before the problem occurred.

Seems like I'm running into a number of problems with Win7.:wave:wave

 

thanks for the responses.

brandypeppy:
I've gone through the properties a bunch of times already and couldn't find anything that would help. it all seems fine except for the "!" mark... =(
I used the windows option "last known good configuration" due to other problem i ran into a couple days ago, but the USB problem didn't change at all.

Halo:
it is a retail version, i got it from newegg.
I don't remember installing many updates before that ... maybe a few from windows.
I do use bittorrent n limewire but they're hardly ever running. However I did use to have Virtual Clone Drive, which I uninstalled because i thought it was conflicting with itunes.

I just started running a full scan with malwarebytes but I always keep it virus free. I deal enough with viruses at work, i dont want them at home too. lol.

BTW, the problem with itunes is that it won't read my audio CD's so i have to use WMP to rip them to my PC... could that be related?? i couldn't figure out what the problem was so I am still using WMP to rip my music =\

I'll post back with the results of the scan.

 

Hey! so just to keep everybody posted and hopefully help anyone that runs into this problem... I SOLVED IT!!!!!!!

It turned out to be an incompatibility of Win7x64 with my MoBo nForce 680i SLI with +4Gb of ram. MSFT had released a hotfix already but when I had tried it, it didn't work. after trying a lot of other stuff I decided to try the hotfix again.
What I had to do was:
-Unninstall hotfix
-Reduce the RAM to 2gb (at this point it still didn't read any USB hard drive)
- Reinstall hotfix (at this point it still didn't read any USB hard drive)
- Put the 8Gb of ram again. FINALLY IT WORKED!!!!!!!!!!

For some reason the hotfix wouldn't work unless I reduced my RAM to -4Gb. Now that I think about it... in a way it's a simple solution. However the fact that it had worked perfectly fine for other people, made it really hard to notice the problem.
I hope this post helps others in the future.

 

Glad to hear you fixed your USB problem, however is your iTunes still playing up and not importing music from your CDs? Was that related to the USB problem?

 

great questions, i had forgot about that.
It wasnt related but i fixed it.
I don't really know what cause the problem but I think... iTunes had a "ghost copy" of my optical drive. i guess the registry got corrupted at some point or something like that.
well here's how i fixed it, it was totally random btw. i tried to burn a cd and then itunes gave me an error that it couldnt find my optical drive. EVEN THOUGH it was pointing to the right one. WEIRD, right? well after that it let me select the optical drive again.... and it was all fixed....
WHY DIDNT I TRIED TO BURN A DISC BEFORE???????
lol
anyways i hope this helps

 

Isn't iTunes weird? I had no end of trouble with it when I got Win 7, uninstalling, reinstalling until I thought I would throw the PC at the wall!! Then one day it worked. Strange things these computers.