USB devices not recognised or problematic

[Dobermanngal]

Hi there
have xp sp2 on a dell dimension 9100.
fairly recently have been having lots of different problems with external USB devices - camera,creative zen nano plus mp3,flashdrive,ipod,sony connect mp3.
pc either does not recognise the device or comes up with lots of different error messages.
All other USB devices - keyboard,mouse,printer & modem work fine and I've tried using different ports & bought a hub to no avail.Did get a pc fix guy in to have a look but he suggested I did a complete re-install of windows - losing any saved data and even then if virus related things might not work! Have zone alarm suite as anti-virus/firewall.
Any suggestions?

[ACtheTROLL]

First tell the computer guy you want your money back .... my goldfish could tell you to crash and burn your machine (but he has more pride).

Hving said that ... this could be tricky need loads more info.

However ... reasonably safe for you to log on as Administrator ("the" not "an") - go to control panel | system | Hardware | device manader
and remove all usb entries from the USB Controllers branch.

then Action | scan for changes .... provide drivers if requested.

Restart .... see what happens.
Open Hardware again ... plug in one of your devices .... see if the device appears in HW manager.

if no joy ... come back ith processor / motherboard type

[Dobermanngal]

Hi ACtheTROLL
Thanx for the reply

To be fair to the pc "non-repair" guy - he did give me a discount off the amount of time he spent going through all the options & did burn me a disk of windows xp to reinstall (which I've been unable to do anyway - keeps giving me a blue error screen and I have to choose between windows xp home or set up!! - complete waste of time!!).

The keyboard & mouse are usb devices - would I still be able to remove the usb entries then act on "action/scan for changes"?

Regards to your goldfish :-)
DG

[ACtheTROLL]

Without getting too techy my goldfish says that ... unlike many other hardware devices USB is supported by your operating system and not by your hardware (NO usb in DOS (you can .... but that's another story) or 95 .... USB only with extra drivers in 98 and native in 2000, XP and Vista!

The first USB mouses (mices?) and keyboards worked fine UNTILL you tried to configure the BIOS and then it all got wierd ....
(next a lot of half truths .....)
Second generation motherboards support mouse and keyboard as "legacy" devices .... so while they are USB ... the motherboard thinks they are pS2 - so they work in all conditions (probably!)

This is a long way of saying .... do it! ... delete them all .... you'll be OK .... if system locks power off/on and windows will (should) sort itself out,
This works 95% of the time ...

To be fair to the un-repair guy ...there does come a point where crash and burn is the only option if you have the recovery CDs try my first first (easiest) if no joy .... then go for it.

but this option should work ... virus or not - virus is software - delete re-load software .... virus gone (99.9999% of time) !!!

not sure what you mean here ...."keeps giving me a blue error screen and I have to choose between windows xp home or set up!!"

normally boot from CD .... then it's either repair or setup .. go setup ... delete partitions (note the size first!!!) ... recreate (same size) ...then install!

But If not .... Dell should provide Recovery CDs (they stopped for a while) so you may need to stamp your feet!!!

http://support.euro.dell.com/support/downloads /driverslist.aspx?c=uk&cs=ukdhs1&l=en&s=dhs&Se rviceTag=&SystemID=DIM_P4_9100&os=WW1&os

[Dobermanngal]

Thank you once again - will have a go.
Cheers
DG