Fix my WinXP USB without the nuke from orbit option!

November 27, 2006 6:31 AM

[WinXPfilter] What's wrong with my USB devices on my computer?

I run a fairly old Athlon XP 2400+ on an Asus A7V-266-E motherboard, which uses a VIA K7 chipset, I believe. Windows XP (+ SP2 and fully updated) is my primary OS, and I have Linux installed on another partition, but I rarely use it as the machine has become more of a gaming box.

The issue started when I yanked out my USB smartphone (Cingular 2125) mid-a-bunch-of-things to take a call. My USB mic stopped working, and windows stopped being able to find drivers for it (despite the only "driver" being usbaudio.sys, included with XP SP2). My other USB devices, including my USB sound card, kept working, though, so I didn't pay it any mind until I tried to fire up Ventrilo and it wouldn't work. After lots of rejiggering ports and trying various installation options for new drivers, I decided that reinstalling the USB controller driver might help. I uninstalled and unplugged all USB devices and rebooted.

Now Windows can't even find the driver for my USB controller. I reinstalled my chipset drivers as well as the VIA-specific USB drivers, but I haven't seen anything. Keep in mind that before I uninstalled these from the device manager, all devices were working correctly (except the USB mic), so it's not a hardware problem. I'll be able to verify this after I get home and can boot up linux.

Anyone else been able to successfully solve something like this? Other forums' information is sketchy-at-best, so I'm leaving it to the geniuses here to figure out.

posted by kdar to computers & internet (11 comments total)

You might consider using System Restore to before that point.
posted by grouse at 6:33 AM on November 27, 2006

System restore is disabled on that machine, so that's impossible.
posted by kdar at 6:50 AM on November 27, 2006

I had similar problems with a USB drive and various flashcards. Xp insisted it couldn't find the driver when I knew it was hoarding them. Much searching turned up nothing. I took them to an IT-man, he connected them to his computer, they worked, reconnected them to my computer, and then they worked.

His explanation was that, for some reason, the devices needed 'waking up' on another system. Hmm.
posted by einekleine at 6:56 AM on November 27, 2006

I have this problem with a USB wifi card and certain computers.

Try opening the device manager, finding the offending device(s) which should have a yellow exclamation point, opening them, choosing update driver from the driver page, choose Install from a list (advanced), then choose dont search option. Double click show all devices, click have disk, browse to the windows\system32 folder, you won't be able to click open unless it finds something. Might be in the \driver subfolder. Also if you can, redownload the driver and point it to that one. If it finds several drivers try the second one on the list, go for more generic options if its available. Give it a shot.

sometimes also just uninstalling the listing in the device manager (right click choose uninstall) and then scanning for changes can work, or uninstalling then rebooting and then plugging in the device.

Also: sometimes ports will go bad but the USB will work, and possibly the USB can go bad as well. Getting a PCI USB card might be a workaround.

I found that USB can be buggy but only on certain installs of XP, basically I had ones that would crap out after a while and then not work until I sacrificed a chicken but on certain computers (usually ones with a clean recent install that I hadn't dicked around on) it would work without a hitch.

Last but not least, there's always the option of installing windows over the previous, but in my exerience it doesn't always clear out all the the junk.
posted by psychobum at 8:22 AM on November 27, 2006

I've found that on "cheaper" implementations of USB that it can't reliably handle multiple devices, particularly if any of them are "intensive". I have this crappy machine with USB2, I can plug an iPod into it, OR the Wifi adaptor OR the USB harddrive. If any one of these things is plugged in, attempting to plug in another will cause both to fail. I suspect that it may have to do with a lack of power to the USB.

Oddly enough, I never have problems with the USB mouse.

As others have said, a pci USB card may solve your problems. It's also possible that a powered USB hub will help.
posted by jaded at 9:14 AM on November 27, 2006

A point of clarification: my install of windows won't recognize the motherboard USB controllers at all now. This isn't a "certain ports work but others don't" problem or a "too many devices cause my USB to crash" problem. It's definitely a Windows software issue, because prior to mucking around with Windows, everything was functioning properly.

A USB hub wouldn't solve anything, because the computer won't recognize the on-board USB controllers that would talk to the hub in the first place.

Unfortunately, it's looking more and more like I'm going to have to do a nuke from orbit system reinstall.
posted by kdar at 11:25 AM on November 27, 2006

I have an old laptop that does this also. I found these instructions for 'refreshing the USB driver stack', but I haven't tried it yet, so maybe your box can be the guinea pig.
posted by a_green_man at 3:52 PM on November 27, 2006

Do also make sure that you have actually disconnected the power cord of the PC during one of your reboots. Leave it out for 30 seconds or so.

There is a condition known as a "USB bus storm" that can occur, which survives reboots and power-downs on modern-ish PCs, if the power cord is left in.

Happens to me about twice a year.
posted by blue_wardrobe at 11:47 PM on November 27, 2006

before you nuke does the usb still work under linux? I know it just worked but things do die. you might be able to go throuhg the add hardware wizard manually in the control panel and try installing a generic host controller (intel a/b), and root hub. sometimes there are drivers/installers on the motherboard site for the onboard usb. I know that if the usb isnt installed/showing up right in the device manager it will act like there is no power coming out of the ports. also there might be something of interest in the device manager if you show hidden devices under view.
posted by psychobum at 4:33 AM on November 28, 2006

I have the A7V266E, and I had some USB issues with a webcam. I got things to work by getting a self-powered hub, one that has it's own AC adapter, and plugging my backup drive and more power hungry devices into it. This probably isn't your problem, but I mention it because you may run into the same problem eventually with that board.

When a USN device quits working for me, I usually uninstall some of the USB root hub entries in device manager, unplug all the devices and rescan for hardware changes. It'll re-add the USB ports and then you can plug your stuff in and it will act like this is the first time you've plugged them in.
posted by Mr. Gunn at 10:20 PM on November 28, 2006

Interesting. I did a nuke from Windows, except I can't reinstall the thing and I'm back to running Linux exclusively. (It doesn't bother me too much, because I've been wanting to buy a new computer for about a year now, so this gave me the shove I needed to take the leap.)

For what it's worth, Linux USB works completely well, and did before I tried the nuke-from-orbit option. Also, the USB will work in Windows until the repair option gets to a certain point... at which point Windows forgets about the USB devices, as well as the CD-ROM drive. I think it's an evil windows error, but I haven't backed up my data yet so I'm not sure.

Thanks for all the advice, everyone.
posted by kdar at 8:19 PM on December 1, 2006