# USB Problem



## Comptechcarl (Feb 3, 2006)

I am running an HP pavilion with XP Home. Yesterday morning we woke up to heavy snow along with a lot of lightning. I pulled the plug on all of our computers, without taking the time to properly shut them down. We have 6 on our network, and that would have taken too much time with the rapid lightning strikes. Anyway, when it was all over all of the machines work fine except for my main machine. On it, none of the USB ports work. I had to dig out my old keyboard and mouse just to get it working at all. Everything on this machine is USB - printer, keyboard, mouse, tablet, scanner, etc. I went into the device manager and removed all of the USB ports. Rebooted several times since, get no errors, but none of the ports work with any of my devices. The ports will power the mouse and keyboard controller, but other than that, they don't work. Any ideas? Thanks, Carl


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

Let's go for the "complete" USB driver renewal and see if that helps.

Create a file with NOTEPAD containing the following lines and save it as FIX.REG
-------------------------- cut after this line --------------------------------
REGEDIT4

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment]

"DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES"="1"
-------------------------- cut before this line --------------------------------

Double click on FIX.REG and say yes to the Merge Into Registry question.

Unplug ALL USB devices.
Open Device Manager.
View, Show Hidden Devices.
Uninstall all devices under USB Controllers.
Uninstall all devices under Disk Drives that you know are not present.
Uninstall all devices under Storage Volumes. Say no to any reboot prompts until you are finished. Also, if a Storage Volume doesn't uninstall, ignore it and move to the next one.
If you have a yellow ? with unknown devices, uninstall all of the entries there as well.

When this is done, reboot TWICE.

Reconnect the USB devices and see if they're recognized properly.


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## Comptechcarl (Feb 3, 2006)

John, Thanks for the suggestions. I did just as you asked, but it didn't help. As the system is coming up, I get pop ups (several times) that say "One of the USB devices attached to this computer has malfunctiond and windows does not recognize it." 
Anything else I should try? Carl


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

You did unplug all the USB devices for the reboots, right?


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## Comptechcarl (Feb 3, 2006)

Yes - there is absolutely nothing plugged into the ports.


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

Just checking.  I'm not sure what's happening here, it could be the USB port hardware actually has a problem. Have you tried the problem devices on another computer?


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## SemmySweet (Apr 12, 2002)

You could try blowing out all the USB ports in safe mode. They might still have some active there. Just a thought Do I have those?


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## Comptechcarl (Feb 3, 2006)

Thanks to you guys on my USB problem. The problem turned out to be the mother board - on the afternoon of the USB problem, the machine quit working all together. All that worked was the processor cooling fan and the box fan. The light indicating the machine was running was not even on. The machine was still under warantee and HP was very good about replacing the board. It is nice to be up and running again. Thanks again! Carl


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

The MB could be the problem... WAIT, I see it was! 

Glad you got it going.


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