# USB Plug and Play devices not working (Windows XP)



## mateijan (May 27, 2006)

Hello all,

I hope somebody can help me with this. I have a PC laptop (IBM thinkpad T20) with Windows XP professional SP2. A while ago I bought an optical USB mouse (Belkin lighted USB mouse, plug and play), which should have worked just by plugging it into the USB port, no software needed.. but it didn't. The device manager does the yellow Q mark thing and keeps looking for drivers that it cannot find (it does this everytime I restart the computer now).
I updated the BIOS and the pointer thing is set to autodisable.
The mouse works on other computers so it's not defective and the USB port works with my printer and my flashdrive. 

I just forgot about this for a while and carried on not using a mouse but now the same problem happens with a portable MP3 player and storage device. Windows looks for drivers for it (I have installed the CD following the instructions) but says it can't find them.. However it knows what kind of decice it is. With the mouse it just says it's unknown.

I tried uninstalling SP2 to see if they would work on SP1 but nothing, I have reinstalled SP2 now and still nothing.. 

I have looked in other posts for similar problems but can't find a solution for this. Does anybody know what could I try? Will I have to reinstall the whole OS or something?

Thank you very much in advance..

Maria


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## kiwiguy (Aug 17, 2003)

I would start by reloading the laptop motherboard chipset drivers, as they control the USB I/O. The default Windows ones may be less than optimum.
They should be downloadable from IBM.


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## mateijan (May 27, 2006)

Hi Kiwiguy

Thanks for your answer. I've just tried to do that following the instructions here http://www.playtool.com/pages/chipsetdrivers/chipset.html, but the updating software from Intel tells me that "the current operating system supports the intel chipset devices on your system. No INF update is needed". I guess that means the chipset driver is up to date ?


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## pugmug (Jun 13, 2005)

Check in bios to see if PnP is enabled. These links from IBM may help also. http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/TPAD-MATRIX.html?qse.t20slp and here, http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-4YQKLL


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## ~Candy~ (Jan 27, 2001)

Is there a setup.exe on the driver cd to install it?


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

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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## mateijan (May 27, 2006)

Hi,

Thank you all for your answers.

Pugmug, I'm not sure what the pnp is.. Can't see anything with that name on the bios. The bios is set for the trackpoint to be autodisabled when a mouse gets plugged in.. is that what you mean? Thanks for the links, I've had a look but can't seem to find anything helpful for this problem, I seem to have all the possible updates and I've gone through the troubleshooting..

AcaCandy, the mouse didn't come with a CD, it's just plug and play so it doesn't need software and in fact there aren't any drivers for it at Belkin.. It works fine on another PC with XP and on a Mac, without having to install anything.. The Zen audio device does have a CD with the installs, which I installed following their instructions. It seems to install ok, creates icons etc. but when I plug the device in, windows "can't find the drivers for it".

John, I was just trying to use your suggestion but when I double click on the FIX.REG file and say yes to add to registry, it comes up with a warning that says "Cannot import Fix.reg: the specified file is not a registry script. You can only import binary registry files from within the registry editor". Do I have to save the file somewhere in particular? 

Thanks again


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## mateijan (May 27, 2006)

Right, I see that I can import the fix.reg from this Registry Editor program. It says that if I import it "the key will be restored on top of the key: My Computer. All value entries and subkeys of this key will be deleted, do you want to continue the operation?"
I've no idea what this means but it sounds a bit scary. Is that what I have to do?


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

Hmm... I just performed the identical operation, cutting the stuff from the message here. Here's the two prompts I get, in the order I get them. If you're getting something else, there's either a problem with the REG file you build, or your registry has some corruption. I've done this operation many times on many machines, it's never said anything like that.


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## mateijan (May 27, 2006)

Hi, yes, I was just being silly.. I had included the lines and the "cut from here" and "after here text" (I thought it may be some kind of command) Doh. It worked now. I'll do the rest of the procedure now and see what happens..
Thanks!


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

OK, I guess I should make that a bit clearer, you're not the first person to do that.


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## mateijan (May 27, 2006)

Bad news... It still didn't work. I did the fix.reg, uninstalled all the devices and restarted twice but the New Hardware wizard still comes up looking for drivers that it doesn't find.. 
I didn't uninstall the Intel host controller or the Root Hub, should I get rid of those as well? 
I think when I tried that before I couldn't get them back and had to do a system restore to be able to use the USB por at all.
I have noticed that there is an "unknown device" with a mouse icon under "mice and other pointing devices" that is always there, no matter how many times I uninstall it.. This one doesn't have the yellow question mark. I don't know if it's got anything to do with the problem....


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