[Briannola]

I have a Asus A7N8X Deluxe MB with WinXP (SP2). I have been unable to acces any USB extrenal hard drives. I have four different types and none will work on this machine. I have two other computers that the external hard drives will work on. I think I have tried all tricks I know to include:
1. Delete the USB drivers
2. Looked in Device manager for conflicts
3. Updated the Bios
4. Changed out the power supply (I thought the other one was failing)

The USB ports work because I have 2 USB printers, a USB wireless adapter and my USB thumb drives all work. I just can't figure out why it will not work with my external hard drives (2.5 60 gb, Coolmax 400gb, Generic 200gb, Coolmax 2.5/3.5 harddrive converter). I don't think it is a power problem because two od my external hard drives have its own power. I even unplged the printers to see if it would work using those connection - no luck.
Windows troubleshooter is worthless and what I can find on the microsoft website does not help.
I have all updates installed and is up to date with AV and Spyware check (Symantec, Ad-adware, Spybot, Spyware blaster, super Anti-Spyware, Pest Patrol).

Can anyony help.

Brian

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check your bios...does the bios see the external drive...

[happyrock]

check your bios...does the bios see the external drive...

[Briannola]

Thanks. I did not look to see if it was in bios yet. New development: I have tried to fix this for hours over the past couple of weeks and could not get it to work. I just plug into the usb port on the back of the computer and it works. I guess I had not tried again from the back because the front gave me the same error. When I plug into the front, it says connected and then gives the error "one of the usb devices has malfunctioned, and windows does not recognize it. For assistance in solving this problem, click this msg." The msg leads to windows trouble shooter that does not solve it. In device manager under USB, it shows one "unrecognized" device (no yellow exclamation point). When I click on it , it shows "no driver installed with this device." I uninstalled it and when I plug in, I get the same results. The drive does not show up in "My Computer." I removed the front panel, cleaned it up, verified the connections to the MB but still get the same error when I plug into the front panel usb. I verified that the connections are correct. Any ideas?

[Tyger]

Could your front USB ports be mis-connected? Unfortunately the motherboard and box makers have not standardized the front panel connections so that is too easy to do.

[Briannola]

I have disconnected and reconnected using the MB manual. Same results

[The Skeptic]

Could be that the front USB ports do not support USB2.0. Try to plug in the front a device that runs on USB 2.0 and see if you get a message like "this device can work faster ..... ".

[Briannola]

According to the mb manual "Internal I/O 1xUSB 2.0 connector supports additional 2 USB 2.0 ports." I just plugged in the thumb drive again and it works from the front panel so I know that it is connected properly. Can you think of anything else? I really appreciate your assistance.

[The Skeptic]

The reason I asked is that the motherboard may support USB 2.0 on all ports but the the USB front connections, which are part of the case, will not. The way to tell is by looking at the cables that connect the motherboard to the front USB ports. If the cables look like a flat strip then It's USB 1.1. If they look like a round, shielded cable, they will support USB 2.0.

At the moment I have no other ideas except for trying to re-install the chipset driver and USB 2.0 driver from Asus internet site. USB 2.0 is part of SP2 and normally you don't have to install it seperately, but no harm trying.

Please recheck the backside connectors. If I understand correctly then they also gave the same error message (as described in your first post). Did you do anything after which they started working properly?

If you you used an externally powered USB drive, known to be good by connecting it to other ports, and it doesn't work, yet, at the same time, another device, also USB 2.0 works, then it's really strange.