Ghosts in the Machine
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Jinx

Original Poster:

12,021 posts

290 months

Monday 23rd January 2006
quotequote all
Gentle folk,

I was over at my father's at the weekend and it appears that his new Pc (Fujitsu Siemens, AMD Athlon 64, 1 gig, 256 meg Radoen Xsomething or other) has a problem with one of its USB ports. Everynow and then XP will throw up the "Unknown device - please unplug/plug in the device" error. This is on a USB port with nothing plugged in.
This is not so bad in itself but this message pops up interrmittantly whilst you are doing anything else (very annoying whilst watching a DVD). I tried disabling the individual port, but the ever helpful windows reactivates the port becuse it believes an unknown device has just been plugged in again Other than taking the machine back, and short of me physically removing the errant USB port is there anyway I can force XP to ignore just the one port on the USB hub?

GregE240

10,857 posts

297 months

Monday 23rd January 2006
quotequote all
I've had this happen once with this very laptop.

Curing it was relatively easy. I went into System Manager and deleted everything under "Universal Serial Bus Controllers". Then shut it down and switched it back on.

It then went through the process of finding the USB devices. Not had a problem since.

A friend had a Tosh laptop with a failed USB port - that did not display the symptoms you describe - it was just dead, plug something in and nothing at all.

Hope this helps.

Jinx

Original Poster:

12,021 posts

290 months

Monday 23rd January 2006
quotequote all
Thanks Greg I'll give that a try.