Blog Marco

Last Saturday, both USB ports on my IBM X40 Thinkpad laptop died. The USB ports simply would not recognise any of the USB devices I had from the external hard drive, external DVD Burner, USB memory sticks or the Microsoft intellimouse. So off to Google to find some answers... Search query for me was "usb drive won't recognise devices" and other combinations thereof. What frustrates me the most is that a lot of the results have a partial relevancy to my problem... some have no helpful information at all... its like a hunt for facts or clues on what exactly to search for. So this blog entry is for those looking for the best way to solve the problem. Lucky for me, the laptop was an IBM and was still under warranty - and my problem was promptly solved by a replacement motherboard - or "system board" was what they called it.

So what led to my USB ports failing to recognise any devices? First of all, one of the ports was acting erratically for about a week - with my USB mouse just dying and becoming non-responsive. I had to unplug and replug it to make it work again. Then, last Saturday when I plugged in a printer through the USB - the ports just died. So the first thing I did was unplug all the ports and restarted the computer a few times. Didn't work. Jiggled the ports. Didn't work. Opened up Control Panel, in System and looking at Devices... no errors or hazard signs there. So I deleted all the USB drivers ports etc. Then I restarted the computer - complete shutdown. The USB ports reinstalled themselves and then the USB ports was still not recognising anything... It could have been corrupt drivers... if you want to check that you have to find something called a system file checker (sfc)... I did find a good site if your having problems - look up their forum... http://www.everythingusb.com/. I was actually thinking of buying a PCMCIA card with USB ports but that would have been a band-aid solution. I found out the X40 problem on a CNET forum... so first thing last Monday I gave IBM a call, they instantly sent a courier to pick it up and this morning (Thursday) I got my laptop back.

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