usb one shot wonder

Having trouble with usb. I am using Hp pavilion 552w operating windows xp. The usb ports in question are on the front panel. Many items that I connect to the front usb's work just fine, even after the have been ejected and reconnected. The problem I am having is with some equipment such as thumb drives. For instance. I can connect a Flash Voyager 1G thumb drive into the usb and am able to use it (once). If I eject it and try to reconnect any of my usb devices they do not work and are not recognized. I have to reboot in order to get these usb ports to function again. Could it be that the thumb drive when ejecting is shutting down my usb ports somehow. Thanks for help and ideas.

 

Guess I should add that when I use this thumb drive on other computers it does fine even after eject and reinsert.

 

your usb ports in the front of your computer maybe version 1.0 usb ports and the thumb drive may require usb v2.0 ports, my computer does something simular like my external harddrive will only work connected to the ports in the back of the pc

 

Make sure that power management is disabled on your ports.
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&product=83505&docname=bph07246
Basically what might be happening is that after you safely eject the device, the port shuts down to save power.

 

It sounds like whats happening is when you use your external drive it takes the drive letter and assigns it to that usb port. Even after you remove the drive it still wants to keep that port as that letter, sort of expecting you to plug it back in. And it doesn't go away until you restart the computer, and will not let anything but that external drive use that port until you do.

One way around it is to plug the external drives usb cord into an unused back port and when you disconnect the drive do it from the drive not the port, leave the cord plugged into the back port and tuck the rest of the cord away until next time. Thats how I do my mp3 player, its cord is always plugged in but I only format and change my music every 2 months or so of grass cutting. All that time the cord is there but tucked away for safe keeping.

 

Plodr is correct. You should be able to manage this in the advanced properties tab of power options in the control panel.

 

thanks for all of the advice, I will try and let everyone know how it went. Many thanks to all.