No USB storage loading properly

[ChrisH]

Swamped today so I will put this up here. I have a laptop that wont recognise any USB flash drives Ipods etc etc I have tried several different devices so it must be the Laptop. What do i need to give a prod since this function is supposed to be a native one?

Cheers

Chris

[Geoff]

USB enabled in the bios?
Flash the bios?
Power management turning off the USB ports?
Update the motherboard drivers?

[NetworkGeezer]

When you say the USB drive is not recognise do you mean you are prompted for a driver or you just don't see the drive in Windows Explorer?
If the latter then one other possiblity may be conflict with mapped network drives. You may need to reassign drive letters in the local disk manager part of Computer Management.

[Abaddon]

We have this from time to time - sometimes deleting the USB controllers and whatnot in device manager, then rebooting cures our problems.

[ChrisH]

Its coming up with it's PnP name in Device manager and says the drivers cannot be loaded.

Ps it had worked previously

[NetworkGeezer]

Try SFC to reinstall the drivers from the CABs.

[ChrisH]

I did a sfc /scannow earlier but it ditn find anything. Having just tried to unistall and reinstall the USB it has done the same thing so it seems like it has no driver cache or something :?

[NetworkGeezer]

Do you have WinPE or a live linux distro? See if you can mount that the drive then. If yes then maybe try XP system restore from the system tools menu.

[ChrisH]

Ive got a knoppix disc somewhere (he says rifling under 2 months worth of paper on his desk) I will try that.

[john]

Ive got a knoppix disc somewhere (he says rifling under 2 months worth of paper on his desk) I will try that.

Best cure for the paper problem is go on holiday! I did and my desk is now clear.

Also, I have had removing the USB controllers work well, and using system restore works well as well.

[ChrisH]

Well i tried system restore to quiete far back it does nothing. If I remove the USB controllers it doesnt add them properly and comes up with the same cannot load driver error! I have ran sfc etc etc. Ive have spent enough time trying to fix this particular problem so I think its time to just reinstall unless someone can come up with something quick to try