"USB Device not recognized" on Windows XP

A mate of mine is currently experiencing issues when plugging in USB storage devices, such as his pen drive (a SanDisk Cruzer Micro), and his MP3 player (a Sony NW A-808).
He's tried them in both the front and rear USB ports, as well as into the ports on a PCI card he has (to eliminate the motherboard USB controller) - all with the same problem.
His USB mouse, keyboard and webcam all work fine, and rebooting worked a few times, but doesn't seem to work now.

Plugging the devices into other people's computers works fine.

We've checked the registry and file permissions for the restrictions preventing the addition of USB storage devices, and they're enabled.

The devices appear to work until the Windows Kernel kicks in, when the keyboard lights refresh - then the pen drive light goes off, and the MP3 player stops reporting being connected.

It may be a problem with assigning drive letters. Try this piece of software from M$, it may help.

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Originally Posted by beeswax

It may be a problem with assigning drive letters. Try this piece of software from M$, it may help.

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Thanks for this, I don't have the same issue as the previous post, but I do sometimes get a machine that refuses to recognise USB flash drives. It seems to good utility to have in the tool box

Have you tried deleting the USB controllers from the Hardware / Device manager, re-booting, letting windows find the drivers again for the USB controllers, re-booting, then trying your USB devices ?

The MS tool doesn't do anything to help - with the tool open, the balloon saying the device cannot be recognized still pops up.
And deleting the USB Host controllers and rebooting didn't help either.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mrcrazy04

The MS tool doesn't do anything to help - with the tool open, the balloon saying the device cannot be recognized still pops up.
And deleting the USB Host controllers and rebooting didn't help either.

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totaly off topic. but love the folders on ur desktop called hacking lol. esp love the txt file titled warez.txt hehe

I'm quite glad it's not my computer now!
I hadn't spotted that. He is also doing hacking though - so the hacking folder is OK - I'll have to talk to him about the warez (or at least storing them on the desktop)!

It looks like the deleting the USB Host Controllers has finally worked.