USB device not recognized!!

Every time I plug in any USB device into my Acer Aspire 5100 laptop, I get the dreaded USB device not recognized pop up message. I have been trying for months to fix this, but cannot find any solution.

some info:
Vista home edition 32bit
AMD Turion 64 x2 mobile TL-52
Acer Navarro MOBO, ATI Xpress 200 chipset

I have tried unplugging the computer and letting the battery drain, updating drivers, system restore... nothing helps.

the problem started about a week after I reinstalled windows on my machine after a power outage caused my computer to cease booting at all. I plugged in my new ipod nano, and updated it one time, and then my USB ports never worked again after that first time plugging in my nano. No devices work, no mouses, no printers, no flash drives.

please help! Thank you!

 

You said that you've recovered windows, but didn't say anything about doing all of your updates again. If you haven't, do so.

Give this procedure a try - even though it's an HP Support Document, its information is generic enough for most system USB problems, and should give you an insight to your problem and courses of action.

USB Device Troubleshooting

 

thanks for the link, I read it through, but unfortunately ive been through things like that many many times and nothing has helped.

It has gotten to the point where I suspect the cause is damage to the motherboard, because nothing has helped. I don't know if its because they do not receive enough power anymore, or if its a driver issue.

 

Can you try connecting a usb printer or anything that doesn't require usb power, but uses usb inteface to the usb port?

 

printers dont work, flash drives dont work, ipods dont work, mice dont work

 

Does your ipod charge when you plug it in your usb port?

 

yes the ipod will in fact charge, but i cannot update any of the files on it. I guess that means that they are receiving enough power.

One thing I have not done is try to update my system's Bios, mostly because the Acer website is so incredibly unhelpful and full of broken links that I have never been able to locate any information which would help me do this.... I dont know how to and I dont know where to look for a Bios update.

 

Plug in a flashdrive. After the error message pops up, go into device manager and see if the device has drivers loaded. If not, load a driver called "usbstor.inf" in your windows folder.

 

under "unknown device" it says there are no drivers loaded.

I checked my windows folder and did a search for that "usbstor.inf" file but found nothing.

 

You can download the driver here if you want

 

ok i dragged that usbstor.sys file into my windows folder, what should I do with it now?

 

Go to device manager and use that driver for your "unrecognized" hardware.
This might make some USB storage device work.

BTW.. forgot to mention.. have you checked if the hardware IDs of usb devices...etc are valid in device manger?

 

Updating your bios is a fairly easy process. All you need is the current bios file from the acer euro FTP for the aspire 5100 series. I still have my aspire 5102 and I have talked many acer users through the bios flash process. Follow my post here and you will be okay [note the current Bios version is 3.13 and not 3.05 as it was at the time of that post]. Try the bios flash and see if it fixes your usb problem.

 

sorry for my confusion but how exactly do i select that as the driver for this device? I also do not see anything identified as a hardware ID

 

so the readme in the folder for 3.13 said
BIOS Update from version 3.12 to 3.13 is only possible in DOS Mode

should I be concerned about that? otherwise i just run the flash exe and it will do everything automatically?

 

What Bios version are you currently on? You can check by using CPU-z.

 

ahh it says im only on version 2.73

i suppose I will be fine to just run the exe then! i will do that now and let you know how it goes

 

ok I have successfully flashed the bios, but my USB ports still do not work

 

ok turns out im an idiot and didnt notice that there IS in fact already a usbstor.sys in my system 32 folder... :\

also: every time I try to update the drivers or select that driver for use with the "unknown device" it just tells me that my drivers are up to date for the device.

 

This is usually a motherboard driver problem, get the latest driver for your motherboard and things should be working well with your USB.

 

If by motherboard driver you mean the ATI chipset drivers, I have already installed those.
and I had already tried installing this as well.

http://drivers.softpedia.com/get/Ot...Acer-Aspire-5100-Cardbus-Navarro-Driver.shtml

is this nothing more than a case of sudden total hardware failure? because I have tried everything at this point

 

The next thing I would try is to reinstall windows. I had a problem with my aspire 5102 when it was 6months old. One day the touchpad just stopped responding to any input. I tried everything from reinstalling drivers to even partially dismantling the notebook to physically check the touchpad module itself none of that worked.

After going through all of that stress I just reinstalled windows and whatever was causing the issue vanished and to this day has never returned.

If reinstalling windows doesn't fix the issue then you most likely have a hardware problem.

 

i used to have this problems with a fujitsu seimens laptop but after windows complete fresh install of windows it worked
-can't assure 100% this will help you but u need to try

 

I guess its just frustrating to me because this problem sprang up when I reinstalled windows because the computer wouldn't boot.

whats even more frustrating is backing up my music is incredibly difficult when I dont have working USB ports....

 

If you can't get any usb devices to work (to allow you to back up your music and files) then you can just create a second partition on your hard drive and copy the music to that partition. If you are going to use acer's erecovery software to reinstall windows then that will only wipe the "c" partition and reinstall windows it doesn't touch any other partitions.

With all of my computers I always have windows on a separate partition away from my data thus allowing me to reinstall and not have any data loss issues.

 

windows reinstalled

problem did not disappear
hardware probably dead

time to shop for a new computer that will hopefully last more than a year and a half