1

HI Spiceheads,

I have a PC that was working just fine, and has been for nearly 5 years now. After a night of windows updates pushed out via WSUS and the PC rebooting, none of the USB’s work. Plugged in a PS2 mouse/keyboard works just fine. Im thinking drivers but device manager says everything is fine.

Checked the BIOS and everything is fine there. Although an odd thing is any keyboard i plug in to this machine(USB) the scroll lock light is on, but nothing else will work.

Keyboard and mouse that i am using do work, as they are the ones i am typing on now(i use my own, known working equipment on problems like this)

edit: forgot to mention this is an XP machine.

Idea’s?

Thanks

Chris

6 Spice ups
2

back to basics, is to repeal the updates, then add them one by one, checking as you go

not in the system, just get one PC, rip off all the latest updates, then re-install them and check all OK after each patch, once you find the fail, pull it from your WSUS, and let MS know too

5 Spice ups
3

Quick test: USB boot via a Linux Live distro of choice. Responsive/unresponsive?

3 Spice ups
4

A few ideas:

  1. Try reinstalling the USB drivers in Device Manager

  2. Rule out hardware issues by booting to CD/DVD (a Linux distro or utility) and see if the USB ports work

  3. uninstall / roll back the patches and see if one of them is to blame

Start with that, and let us know the results.

edit: fixed typo.

7 Spice ups
5

I have had this happen on a couple PCs recently too. I think it is a corrupted Windows driver for the USB Controllers.

You can try removing the USB Controller drivers in Device Manager, restarting and letting Windows reinstall them.

4 Spice ups
6

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Good points

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If this is a business machine, check the anti-virus software. Some Endpoint applications can be configured to disable all USB devices by class or guid with manually entered exceptions that are approved devices. If your USB drivers were re-installed during the update, windows could have assigned a new guid to them and the AV could be seeing them as new devices and blocking them. I am thinking that device manager would show these USB devices as being disabled. It has been a while since I have seen this happen to me.

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Yep same as AvengerM1. Deleted the USB devices, rebooted and let Windows install them again.

Saves uninstalling patches and re-installing one by one. What a PITA!

1 Spice up
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Reinstall the chipset driver from the vendor’s support page, even if it’s the same version. You can also Uninstall devices such as all USB controllers from Device Manager, then Scan for Hardware Changes to reinstall them without rebooting. Make sure you do all this as a local admin with Group Policy not removing anything. You may also want to remote in from another computer via VNC or RDP as breaking all the USB controllers in Windows usually leaves you without a mouse and keyboard.

There is also a chance this is a Power Supply or Motherboard issue that happens to coincide with your recent updates, but I’ve had windows updates randomly break some freaky things this year already. Plus I like to blame MS, as everybody needs a hobby.

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Easiest way I’ve found to correct this is to simply use the rollback driver option on each usb device in devman until the problem is fixed. Uninstalling and rolling back windows updates should be a last resort as that can get really messy.

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Booted with mini XP off of hirens boot disk and USB’s still dont work. seems like it must be hardware failure considering a different OS isnt picking it up. Will be swapping out a HDD from a known good OS of the same type of PC and see if they work to be safe.

Thanks for the info guys, will be handing out BA and HP tomorrow.

Chris

1 Spice up
12

Check if the USB port is enabled in the BIOS. If it is turned off it will not do anything. Was it working before? When did it stop working? Were any updates performed prior to it not working? If you had some updates or software installed, try doing a system restore to an earlier time when the USB port was working properly or uninstall the program that was installed prior to it failing to function. Does the USB work in another computer?