Weird Problem!! Help!

[krikle]

Hi,

I'm not sure what area to post this in. I think these forums should have just a plain ol tech support category. Anyway..

I have a gateway NV series notebook and it's giving a really weird problem. Windows 7 64-bit, home premium.

The sound the system makes when a USB device is inserted, that sound is going off all the time every single second. As soon as the computer starts up and the desktop loads you hear it. There is NOTHING connected to the laptop. When I go into device manager, you can see it keeps picking up something called 'Portable Devices' and under it is a G drive. Again, there is nothing connected to the laptop.

I have reformatted the laptop thinking that would solve it and it did not! I also installed the latest chipset drivers. I also uninstalled the first instance under USB controllers in device manager and restarted the computer.

Nothing will work, please help!!! So strange, I keep hearing this noise and in device manager portable devices and G drive keep appearing and disappearing. Thanks.

 

[netyoda]

Go into your BIOS Setup screen during the Boot process. Once there, see if you can Disable the USB ports. Then continue to boot the laptop. If not, under Device Manager, right-click on the 'Portable Device' and Disable it. Reboot the PC and see if it still occurs. If it doesn't, you might have a bad USB port or the controler on the motherboard might be bad. Either way, replacement is the only solution. If it is still under warrenty, you should be able to get it replaced at no charge but if not, look online for a replacement motherboard for the that particular model. Hope this helps!

 

[krikle]

Hi,

There is no option in BIOS to disable USB ports. I went into device mngr. The G drive shows up under portable devices only for a second at a time. But the list in device mngr keeps refreshing and the sound won't stop, because it's as if its continuously being disconnected and then reconnected.

Keep in mind there is NOTHING connected tot he laptop and I even reformatted and still having this problem. I managed to right click on G for a second and hit uninstall....it did nothing. I hit disable and it did nothing. I even uninstalled the first instance under usb controllers and after it reinstalled it did the same thing. No matter what i try this will not stop and I can't figure it out. It's weird, there's nothing connected to the computer. Please help.

 

[krikle]

I also updated the BIOS to the latest version and it did not resolve the problem

 

[krikle]

Solved!!

After giving up on trying to figure out what the problem was -- I mentioned I reformatted the system, only to have the same problem.

I took a break trying to figure out the problem and proceeded to install all the drivers (because I formatted). I was installing the driver for the card reader and it gave me a msg saying that the install was unsuccessful because the hardware couldn't be detected. So a light bulb went off in my head. Aha! I assumed there was some cable that was disconnected or that the card reader had gone 'bad' itself. I didn't pick up on this in device manager because it just kept telling me it was a portable device called G. Call it a dummy moment but I did not relate this to the card reader in my head.

I proceeded to take the laptop apart. Once I got the palmrest off and had the thing apart. I remembered that most of the card readers are soldered on the motherboard and there is no cable involved. I had a very close look and noticed something inside. I got a pair of pliers and pulled out a micro SD card!! When I saw that, everything made sense. Keep in mind that when I got the thing from the customer, the little 'dummy' pice of plastic that's put in those card readers to fill the space - was in there. So to the naked eye this did not even come in my mind. Yeah, that's right .. the customer had the dummy card AND the memory card in there. Obviously, it was jammed in very far. I couldn't have seen it if I never took it apart. The card did not fit that particular reader and I guess they t hought they had to put the memory card in , then that piece of plastic. Uhg...some of those users!!

Thanks anyway.