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XP USB Woes - please help

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GeordieBoy

Thu May 22 2008, 11:11PM

Registered Member #1232 Joined: Wed Jan 16 2008, 10:53PM
Location: Doon tha Toon!
Posts: 881

Hi all,

I'm after a bit of advice if anyone has the time to read this and any suggestions.

My dad has an Intel Celeron 1.8GHz XP machine with HP Photosmart 2575 printer, and a Nikon SLR both connected via USB cables. The printer is permanently connected to a rear USB socket, and the digital camera is occasionally plugged into a front-panel USB socket for downloading pictures. Both devices originally worked perfectly.

At the weekend he had started downloading pictures (via an HP application that came with the printer that automatically pops up when the camera is connected.) During the download he tripped on the USB cable and pulled it out of the front panel USB socket.

Since then the PC will now not find either the Nikon camera or the printer. The connection of either device to any of the PC's front or rear USB ports results in the PC saying "Unknown USB device". A complete un-install and re-install for the HP drivers+software bundle has failed to make it find the printer. The Nikon camera still works fine with any other XP PC, being handled by XP's default Camera and Scanner Wizard.

There appears to be no physical damage to the front panel USB connector, and I thought that USB devices were hot-swappable anyway. Is it possible that the sudden disconnection of the camera device mid-download may had damaged the PCs USB interface? Or is it more likely that it has scrambled the Windows registry rendering that PC unable to find the printer and the camera any more? (Although strangely the PC will still find an old Kodak digital camera when connected to the front USB panel socket.)

System restore was tried. It failed to fix the problem but came up with a load of requests for Systray Install CDs?!?!? ....so was aborted.

Any suggestions on what to try would be much appreciated. At the moment my next course of action was going to be a full reformat and re-install of XP plus all applications! Sounds a bit extreme for just unplugging a USB cable at the wrong moment! Thanks in advance for any replies...

-Richie,

...

Thu May 22 2008, 11:57PM

Registered Member #56 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:02AM
Location: Southern Califorina, USA
Posts: 2445

If you can sucessfully connect other devices to the usb ports I would definitley look for a software problem. If there was any damage done, it would have been that the connector was damaged and now has an intermitand open or shorted pin that is messing with you.

If you are able to, I might suggest putting in some kind of linux livecd, and see if it recognises the usb devices. If you aren't familiar with linux that might be easier said than done however....

If you are reconsidering a reinstall, why not let system restore have its install CDs?

GeordieBoy

Fri May 23 2008, 10:06AM

Registered Member #1232 Joined: Wed Jan 16 2008, 10:53PM
Location: Doon tha Toon!
Posts: 881

Hi Peter,

Thank you for the tips. I'm not familiar with Linux so that one might be a bit tricky. I've checked in Windows device manager and the "USB Host controller" and "USB Root Hub" icons all still say "This device is working properly" ...but they are joined in the list by "Unknown Device" when either the Nikon or HP products are connected.

I'm not sure what went wrong with the System Restore attempt. I looked at the list of Restore Points and they seem to have been generated about every 3 or 4 days for the last 3 months! There have not been any hardware changes to that machine in at least 6 months so I just picked a restore point from a couple of weeks ago, (well before the USB cable got yanked out, and the problems started.) System restore seemed to go okay until the machine rebooted, then a whole load of strange icons kept popping up in the notification area on the taskbar next to the clock. A window also persistently poped up in the middle of the screen entitled "Systray" and it requested installation CD number 1. I have no idea if it meant the Win XP CD, or one of the many other driver/SW CDs that came with the PC. I clicked cancel on this window about 30 times then decided to end the systray process with Ctrl+Alt+Del to make it go away and I reverted back to the Un-"System restored" setup again. At least the machine will boot XP again now, but without identifying the two troublesome devices.

Will disconnect the front panel USB ribbon cable from the M/board in case the front socket did get damaged, and see if that makes any difference. Also check in case anything else got jerked loose in there. Then was gonna backup all data, reformat, and re-install XP plus all applications. Someone else mentioned buying a seperate USB interface card, although the PC does have 6 ports already!

Thanks again,

-Richie,

Conundrum

Fri May 23 2008, 07:59PM

Registered Member #96 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:37PM
Location: CI, Earth
Posts: 4061

Try removing all USB devices, disable USB in BIOS, reboot, enable USB devices in BIOS and then allow XP to find it again; this usually works.
-A

GeordieBoy

Tue May 27 2008, 01:57PM

Registered Member #1232 Joined: Wed Jan 16 2008, 10:53PM
Location: Doon tha Toon!
Posts: 881

Hi Andre, Thanks for the tip. I tried this at the weekend. Disabled USB support under PCI menu in BIOS, confirmed that "USB host controller" and "USB hub" icons had gone out of XP's device manager, then rebooted and enabled USB again. USB host controller and hub icons appeared again in device manager but it still won't work with printer or camera though!

A friend of mine suggested removing the hard-drive with current XP installation, programs, data and drivers, and replacing it with a temporary smaller one. Then doing a trial re-installation of XP onto this drive to see if it can be made to find the two USB devices again. If this works I can then plan a full backup and re-install of everything on the original drive when I have a weekend spare. Conversely if the trial installation fails then the hardware must have got damaged, and fixing that first might fix the problem without needing a format and re-install?

That's my latest thoughts on the matter anyway! Does that sound reasonable?

Thanks again for your help,

-Richie,

Steve Conner

Wed May 28 2008, 10:50AM

Registered Member #30 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 10:52AM
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 6706

Have you tried other USB devices on the faulty PC, besides that old Kodak camera? It's possible that the USB 1.1 might still be working but the 2.0 could be screwed. Try something 2.0 like a newer thumb drive.

It might also be a good idea to borrow a USB 2.0 interface card and try plugging it in. Or even buy one as they're pretty cheap, and installing XP takes a fair amount of time, and time is money etc.

If the camera and printer still don't work through the new card, then you know the software has got itself in a twist. USB drivers are supposed to be able to handle it when the device suddenly goes missing, but there is no mechanism to guarantee this: it's just a design guideline, and whether it succeeds is down to the skills of the programmer who wrote the driver. But I doubt even Linus Torvalds himself could save you if you pulled out your thumb drive while writing a large file to it, for example.

I've had similar problems that not even a System Restore would touch. I tried one of those USB 3G modems, and then wanted to go back to the PCMCIA card version. But XP's "New Hardware Found" still tries to use the driver for the USB modem and goes down in flames. I think the problem is caused by two different driver files with the same name.

There seems to be no way of making it forget that the USB modem existed, and the best I could manage is to screw it up so badly that neither modem works. The offending machine is still sitting broken in a corner of my house.

GeordieBoy

Wed May 28 2008, 12:54PM

Registered Member #1232 Joined: Wed Jan 16 2008, 10:53PM
Location: Doon tha Toon!
Posts: 881

Hi Steve,

Thanks for all your input. I went over to my folks place last night and tried a few more things out.

Firstly, the PC will detect the old Kodak digital camera correctly as a Kodak CS-"whatever" model number and the pictures in a filmstrip through the "Scanners and Camera" wizard. It would also detect my Nokia mobile when plugged into the USB via its DKU cable. It appeared as a mass-storage device and I was able to play MP3 songs that are stored in the phone via the PC's speaker by clicking on them in the new drive that appeared. I don't own one of those USB thumb-drives but will borrow one from work and try that. I didn't know that there was USB1.1 and USB2.0 so I will look into that. The Nikon camera and HP printer/scanner still don't work, so maybe they are both 2.0 devices. (The printer is meant to be an all in one copier/printer/scanner/card-reader and none of these functions are working.)

A friend also told me to go through all the OEMxxx.INF files in C:\WINDOWS\INF\ and identify any that were to do with the HP photosmart printer. I found 8 files that referenced that printer and removed them from the system along with their accompanying PNF files. He told me that this would force the PC to search for those drivers again if they had got messed up. Unfortunately doing this still hasn't made either device work again. I was quite dissappointed, it didn't even provoke Windows XP into complaining that I'd deleted anything!!!

I think my dad's problem is similar to the one you described where whenever those devices are presented to the computer it has either permanently blacklisted them _or_ it always tries to use the same corrupted drivers again.

I will try to borrow a memory stick, USB interface card, and a small HD (10GB or so) from work. Will try the USB memory stick and the USB interface card and report back. Then next step will be to do a trial fresh installation on that small HD to see if I can get a minimum installation of XP up and running with USB connection to printer and camera working. It would be quicker and much more convenient though if the USB interface add-in card did the trick!

Thanks again for your advice,

-Richie,

Conundrum

Sun Jun 01 2008, 11:02AM

Registered Member #96 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:37PM
Location: CI, Earth
Posts: 4061

Could be a corrupted system file. I'd Ghost it to another drive and then attempt a repair install on it.

Regards, -A

aonomus

Sun Jun 01 2008, 04:08PM

Registered Member #1497 Joined: Thu May 22 2008, 05:24AM
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Posts: 801

Have you tried using the camera+cable on another computer? You could eliminate 2 possible failure points that way.

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