Windows XP 2002 Home Edition won't recognize USB drives

[leslieann228]

I have an HP desktop running Windows XP 2002 Home Edition. It won't recognize any USB drives I plug in. I've tried 5 different drives that I've used previously with this computer and also two smartphones that have previously been used and worked fine before, but now when they are plugged in, I get the "USB device not recognized...." error. I've checked for driver updates and also uninstalled all the USB drives and plugged one at a time in and they will not re-install. I have tried each USB drive in all of the different ports, including the one that my keyboard is using(keyboard runs fine). I've tried calling the HP people but few of them speak English and I must have this particular computer running to be able to work. What in the world is wrong with it? It worked fine Friday afternoon but now it's not.

 

[tigsounds]

Delete all the USB controllers in Device manager, forcing Windows to re-install them:

Start>Control Panel>System>Hardware>Device Manager

Expand the "Universal Serial Bus Controllers" section and right-click each controller and Uninstall them.

Do not delete the actual "Universal Serial Bus Controllers" entry, just the controllers under it.


Now click "Action" at the top of the window and click on "Scan for hardware changes" Windows will find all the controllers again and re-load their drivers.

Try your devices again now.

 

[leslieann228]

Tried it, to no avail. going to try maybe rolling back to a previous system restore point

 

[leslieann228]

Well, CPU says that system restore points were turned off by a user and I have to contact the server admin. I am the only one to ever use this computer, and am on the only account on the CPU, am I missing something?

 

[patmore]

Drivers for USB ports
________________________________________
I have an Acer Aspire one AOA150 netbook with Windows XP. I had a problem with an external hard drive being recognised as 'found new hardware 'but saying it needed a driver and wizard not finding one - see this forum for other devices. This new Toshiba external hard drive stor e art 4 1tb is usb 3.00 and not self powered but should be reverse compatible with usb 2 ports.

It worked fine on my Pc and works fine on someone else Laptop - powers up and autoplays - no problem but does not show in Disk Manager but does show as unknown device in 'Device Manager' with yellow but driver wizard cannot find a driver - message code 1.

Someone told me to unistall the drivers under USB, in Device manager, then turn off Acer and remove mains power and battery and leave for about 30 minutes and said that when I reboot it would reinstall drivers for usb's. Well it has not reinstalled them and they have turned into 5 unknown devices.

I downloaded a new chipset from Acer site and extracted to a folder in my documants under downloads. It had a setup.exe but I did not dare use that as I thought it my overwrite all my files and everything on my Acer so just tried to let the wizard find the files. When I then went to device manager and unknown devices, update driver and pointed it to the folder it still came bac saying unable to locate drivers and finished.

So now I am worse off than before as my usbs do not work at all with anything and they were fine before. Now I am in a panic. What can I do.

Please help to get back my USB ports.

 

[patmore]

also tried the action, just says found new hardware and takes me thru the wizard again.

 

[patmore]

sorry forgot to say - they changed to unknown device after I tried to roll back!