USB Port on Strike

PDD

Hi Folks,

I have a very very strange issue that I was hoping to get some feedback on. I bought a new MP3 player last week and its all worked fine up until now, it seems that it had a domestic with my USB Port and now they are not talking.

I came back from Lunch one day to find that my PC (WinXP) did not recognize the MP3 player when it was plugged in. I tried both USB Ports on the front of my machine but no joy however if I plug the MP3 player into any of the USB ports at the back it works fine.

I think its an issue with Windows as this also happened on my home machine (Win2K). I can use one USB port on the front but the other one never works.

I have never seen anything like this before and I am racking my brain to think of a reason why it would work on one USB Port / controller but not on another. The device obviously does work and there is no problem with the driver because I can connect to the device if its plugged into another USB port so it must be something with Windows. Any ideas or feedback welcome.

Dave

Shane O' Malley

Does it recognise if anything was plugged in. IE Does it give a message that it could not install the USB hardware. If so, i recommend deleting the drivers for that device.

Is the MP3 player recognised by another computer?

Aido c

Lightening blew out my USB port a few weeks ago

BKtje

Can you check your device manager and see if the USB port is reporting any errors (when plugged in and when not plugged in)?

The front usb ports are usually conenctors connected to the motherboard by cables. Can you see if this is indeed the case and if so that they werent knocked loose.

PDD

Hi Folks,

Cheers for the feedback but its not anything to do with ligtening, it doesnt recognised the MP3 Player when plugged in (as mentioned it works fine in the USB ports on the back), it works fine on other PC's. The device manager shows no errors at any time and when I plug it in then manually scan for changes it recognises nothing.

Dave

hshortt

Open device manager and delete the USB ports from the system (right click and choose delete on the highlighted ports). When you reboot they will be automatically re-added. This happens from time to time and is common enough. The fix is as desribed.

Cheerio
Howard

Shane O' Malley

Sorry did not spot you saying it worked fine on the back ports.

I suspect the front ports are not powered or not enough.

I have that on a couple of Dell's.

Nothing that can be done with it in that case.

Shane

Capt'n Midnight

you could connect a powered usb hub to it, and get the power from it , lota of hassle and another plug, or just get a longer usb extension cable so you can use the back ports

some dells will only work as 1.1 until the correct drivers are installed

IIRC usb can supply either 100mA or 500mA depending on which type it is, that's why some devices use a double headed cable or have a 5V input too,

guigsy

Do the front USB ports work for any other devices?
Perhaps the wiring on the inside has come away from the board if not.
Chassis ports are often cabled directly into the boards jumpers and have a common controller.

PDD

Hi Guys,

Its definately not the wiring as other thumb drives work in the front ports no problem even when plugged in side by side with the problem MP3 player.

Dave

Shane O' Malley

But the Thumb Drives may not require as much power as the Mp3 player.

Just to get things straight:

1. The MP3 player works on the back ports (So not a driver problem)
2. The MP3 player works in other computers
3. The USB posts on the front will power low power thumb drives

If that is the case, the likely result is that it is a power issue.

To prove it, get a powered USB HuB.

Plug it into the front port

Without powering up the Hub, try the MP3 player.

If that fails , try it with the Hub powered.

If it works then the issue was with the power on the USB port.

Shane

ressem

If you go into device manager, under "Universal Serial Bus Controllers" double click on each USB Hub/USB Root Hub entries and click on the power tab.
They'll usually tell you that the Hub can supply 500mA per port, and what the connected devices claim to draw. (300mA is not unusual for flash ram).
If you have two devices on the same front hub, it might be worth shuffling to another port.


--- speculative overtechy nonsense follows --

Another possible cause is an issue with windows when it detects the same USB serial number for two different devices.
There are registry entries often added for composite devices which tell it to ignore an element of the device.
Also some usb devices require microsoft descriptor addons.

So first step is to identify the usb device and it's registry key.
If you use
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/usb_devices_view.html
(It provides details on unplugged devices as well as connected)
and record the vendor id and product id of the device you are having problems with.

Also check whether it shares a serial number with another device.

Possible fix if the above checks out---
Use only if your comfortable with registry editing, otherwise stick to the other ports.

Under:
HKLM/System/CurrentControlSet/Control/Usbflags/
you'll see registry keys
which go like
(046dc00b0610)
where 046d is the vendor id, c00b is the product id seen earlier.

Add a new Binary value in the registry in the above key
Name: IgnoreHWSerNum01237890
Value:1

Where 0123 is the vendor key, 7890 is the product key.

Restart.
If it doesn't sort the issue, then remove this entry.

PDD

Hi Folks,

Cheers for the feedback. Shane I dont think the front USB ports issue is to do with power as the MP3 player did work fine it iin for about a week then all of a sudden stopped being recognised.

I checked the power levels and the MP3 player is draining 400mA (prob because the SD expansion slot is seen as a card reader) while a standard thumb drive is only drawing 100mA. So while there is a big difference in power usage I dont think this is the cause as it worked perfectly fine beforehand.

Dave