Asus W3J USB Issues

So out of the 3 usb ports it seems like only 2 of them work. One of them I use for my mouse, and the other I use for my external harddrive. However if i swap the two, the mouse doesnt work in the other usb port. Additionally my other external hard drive as well as my usb key doesnt register on this laptop.

I have no idea whats going on. When I plug a usb device into any of the three usb ports theres a sound but when I go to check for the device it doesnt appear in explorer. Does anyone know how to fix this?

 

what version of windows are you using? Have you noticed if windows states it found new hardware, and if it's installing it (successfully)? If you check device manager, do you see your USB controllers/ports? These might just be some things to check first. Also, did your mouse and/or hard drive come with drivers and are they installed?

 

Sounds like the device was misdetected once and had it's profile corrupted. Or it's taking a really long time to detect.

So you're saying that it will detect all these devices so long as there isn't any device plugged in this specific port? Or does it follow the device?

 

Ok seems like I have to manually go in device manager and update drivers everytime its detected. However with a certain external hdd i use the volumes of the hdd are always corrupted somehow so it doesnt show up. My western digital mybook seems to work fine. My friends external also seems to experience the same problem.

 

How old is the External HDD that is corrupt? I know some of the older USB HDD's weren't configured to run with a Windows defrag or checkdisk, and as such were susceptible to problems like that.

 

It's a AMS VENUS Black External HDD enclosure for EIDE HDDs. I got it a year ago and it holds my even older 120 gig maxtor drives. It worked fine with my xps m1710 but the volumes show up as corrupt on the asus w3j. Oh yeah I run windows xp pro on both laptops. Is there a way to configure the usb hdd to run with the windows defrag or checkdisk?