----- Original Message -----
From: "Wayne Johnson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, February 27, 2006 10:29 PM
Subject: Re: Soft:USB drivers
Some USB external devices need external power supplies & even if they
don't the USB port may need to provide power to the device. Either way if
not enough power is getting to the device it will never show
Recently I wrote to another list asking about how to revive the USB ports on
an Asus P4P800 SE motherboard. The consensus was the USB ports have died.
Perhaps the low end Lexmark printer the customer was using killed them. The
customer said they were working fine before I did a format and reinstall
job. I use my USB external hard drive to copy data each and every time I do
a format and reinstall job, so I know the USB ports were working when her
computer left my shop.
The customer is going to bring her computer back along with a new USB card.
I will flash the BIOS installing the latest one. If this does not work I
will install the USB card. If my method does work, she can return the USB
card.
My point here is I test USB ports with a thumb (jump? Which term was
officially adopted for these little miracles?) drive. Those do not require
external power. If a thumb drive does not work, the USB ports are
inoperative. This is why I consider this the easiest test. Also I boot to a
bootable CD that has the 2003 version of ghost.exe on it. Even the old USB
1.1 computers see this external hard drive without Windows loading. This is
true even if the computer's internal hard drive is not hooked up. I use this
test to totally eliminate Windows problems from being the problem with the
USB ports.
When I test hardware such as USB ports and not allow Windows to load, is
this considered Real DOS mode? They say DOS is dead. I test hardware outside
of the Windows environment whenever possible. As long as you have Windows
loaded, you have a source for the problem you are looking for. My bootable
CD also has CD ROM drivers. This allows me to see if the CD/DVD devices will
read data from CD's without loading Windows.
It would be bad to replace hardware because the existing hardware did not
work with Windows loaded and then find the same problem with the new
hardware. Likewise, it would be bad to reinstall Windows in attempts to fix
a hardware problem when the hardware is defective or inoperative.
Chuck
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