I think my USB ports are toast.........

[FinanceDude]

Is there a way to diagnose if it works?

Also, if one or both of them are bad, how easy is it to fix them?

Thanks

[RunningBum]

What are your symptoms?

The problem I've seen the most is that a pin gets bent, and if it is touching another pin you can get messages about a USB port power surge or something like that. Turn the PC off, shine a good light in there and if the pins aren't all straight, use a tweezer or a straightened paper clip to straighten them.

Other than that, make sure the USB device or cable isn't bad. Does it work on another computer? Do you have other devices and cables to try? Chances are all of them aren't bad, but it sure is nice to see them working somewhere else so you can be sure you've isolated the problem.

Next I'd probably go through the control panel and see if there are any trouble shooting steps or software repair or reset that can be done, but I'm pretty doubtful you'll find something useful. That'd be my last gasp before paying for service.

I've never had a USB port go bad ,though I do have a Dell laptop that had a port that was always tough to plugh a cable into, and one day the port connector came out with the cable. I couldn't reattach it. Dell wanted me to send in the whole laptop, I didn't want to do that, so I just got a USB hub for when I need to use more than one port.

I don't know what it takes to fix a USB port if it's actually gone bad.

[Janet H]

It could be a driver problem. Check to see if your drivers are properly installed.

What kind of errors are you getting? If your getting a "failure to locate new device" msg, it's probably drivers. If you get nothing, make sure that the ports are enabled and then it may be time to visit your local tech wiz...

[FinanceDude]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Janet H It could be a driver problem. Check to see if your drivers are properly installed. If your getting a "failure to locate new device" msg, it's probably drivers. If you get nothing, make sure that the ports are enabled and then it may be time to visit your local tech wiz...

That's the message I get. How do I enable the ports? Like I said, it was all working fine a week ago.

[Life_is_Good]

Before ER.... I was an IT Manger providing tech support.

You might be able to revive the ports by deleting (or enabling) them from inside the Control Panel. Open the System icon, then click on the hardware tab. Click on the Device manager button to bring up the list of hardware devices. Expand the Universal Serial Bus Controllers by clicking on the + to see each of the USB port devices.

Using the Action menu command, you can try enabling them (if they are disabled). I have found that if you delete ALL the entries and then reboot the PC, Windows XP will reinitialize the ports and reinstall the drivers from scratch on the fly. I've successfully revived many USB ports using this method.

Best of luck!