USB troubles, old tower with outdated drivers

Primal_Mojo

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Sep 4, 2016
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I know this could be a long shot, but hopefully I'm not the only one who's tried to do this. I wouldn't have even thought about it, except for the fact that this thing freezes up all the time when browsing, and I don't think I can find driver updates anymore. Also I know that my laptop was even older and it took the upgrade just fine, so I figured it was worth a shot since that actually made my old laptop better.

Right now I'm creating a Windows 10 boot disk on a flash drive, using my laptop. My biggest problem so far seems to be that for some reason, all of my 7 available USB ports don't seem to work. Anything I already had plugged in to a USB port is fine (keyboard, mouse, etc.), but if I try to plug in a flash drive or my phone or anything else, it pops up a little window that says "USB device not recognized - one or more of the USB devices attached to this computer has malfunctioned, and Windows does not recognize it. For assistance in solving this problem, click this message." But then when I click on it, it says no drivers are installed for it, but it doesn't give me an option to locate the drivers. Oddly enough, my keyboard is plugged in to the back of the tower and works fine, and it has its own USB port, which I have a 4-port hub that has my mouse dongle plugged into it, and both keyboard and mouse work fine. So why, when I plug my phone or a flash drive into the same 4-port hub, does it not seem to recognize that anything is there? And the 2 ports on the front of the tower and the one open on the back all give me the error message I mentioned before.

So maybe this is a combination USB/Windows 10 upgrade issue, I'm not sure. I guess I need to get the USB ports working so that I can use the flash drive to even get Windows 10 going. Does anybody have any advice on how to make my USB ports (even one of them would be fine for now!) cooperate so that I can get this upgrade done? Thanks!

Cross-posted to Windows 10
 
Solution
Anecdotally W10 will run on 'legacy' hardware and 'breath new life' but NOT performance. It will not make it run 'more smoothly', it will still suffer the same bottlenecks and 'basic issues' when compared to even a system from 5 years ago becaue your talking alot older tech at a very lower range. Don't forget also a average install of W10 can be over 40GB, and on systems like that, your talking 10Gb drives were 'WOW!' at the time.

If you wanted to use that old system, for giggles and fun then throw a copy of Ubuntu on it would be the best solution for its use and learn the basics of Linux on it. Otherwise for your friend's use yeah walk to Walmart, show him the wonders of portability (hey look when you in the garden, you sit this on...
First what version of Windows is ON the tower right now? Second how old IS the USB port / Card / Mobo, because if it is 'really old' then they may be USB 1.1 ports and can't read a USB 3.0 stick. Have you tried a 2.0 stick and see if you had any better luck? Would be the first things. Alot depends on the version of Windows too.
 


Well, this tower came from a friend of mine (his old one, gave it to me when he upgraded and my video card took a dump), and it had Vista Home Premium on it. :sarcastic: Not sure how he functioned at all with this, but we make the best of what we have, right?

The card/card reader is about the same age, but I know it's not the card reader, because it works with other cards in my laptop and my fiancee's computer just fine. I managed to get to the point where the computer was searching online for drivers for the USB ports, but it just froze and never found anything - I couldn't even cancel it, just had to use the task manager to shut it down. One other option I have to get the files from the flash drive is the tower has an internal card reader, but it doesn't seem to be hooked up - when I put an SD card in, the light doesn't come on, no sounds, beeps...nothing. Maybe I need to see if I can get that working instead? That is, if you think the USB ports are a lost cause.

 
NOOOo that is not at all going to work, the issues will be that it isn't able to 'understand' what your 'futuristic' tools are (what is a USB 3?! I work in USB 1.0! Heck I can run DOS! ) . Your BEST and ONLY bet is to take a very low end CD (like 8x speed or less) and drag and drop the pictures, documents etc to it and burn it to that.

There is NO potential use for that PC and your wasting time and effort when a new $250 Laptop from Walmart, under warranty, and the parts/ drivers / etc. will be supported is the only solution for such a legacy device.
 


So no upgrade at all would work? Not even to Windows 7? It just drives me nuts when I'm trying to browse and it freezes, sometimes for minutes at a time. I hoped upgrading it would do what it did for my old Dell D830 laptop, which was breathe new life into it and make it run more smoothly.
 
Anecdotally W10 will run on 'legacy' hardware and 'breath new life' but NOT performance. It will not make it run 'more smoothly', it will still suffer the same bottlenecks and 'basic issues' when compared to even a system from 5 years ago becaue your talking alot older tech at a very lower range. Don't forget also a average install of W10 can be over 40GB, and on systems like that, your talking 10Gb drives were 'WOW!' at the time.

If you wanted to use that old system, for giggles and fun then throw a copy of Ubuntu on it would be the best solution for its use and learn the basics of Linux on it. Otherwise for your friend's use yeah walk to Walmart, show him the wonders of portability (hey look when you in the garden, you sit this on the chair and you can watch the video on how to shape those rose bushes as your doing it!)
 
Solution