[badben25]

I recently re-installed Windows XP Pro SP2 (fresh installation, formatted everything) and since then I've been having this problem that's pissing me off. I've tried plugging in my usb card readers (3), portable external hard-drives (2) and my flash drives (5) and as soon as I plug them in my pc restarts itself. this even happens on similar devices belonging to my brother, my dad and my friends, and it happens on all usb ports on the computer. but every other usb device (like mouse, keyboard, printer, mobile phone data cable) works perfectly fine. I googled it but all I got was that certain USB ports may be 'hosed', but the case was that any usb device plugged into the specific 'hosed' port(s) would cause the pc to restart, which is quite different from my situation. all usb drivers are properly plugged in, and this never happened to me earlier on. what really makes me mad is that this is a fresh install of Windows and i shouldn't be having any problems, atleast for the first month. on top of that I need to regularly use the data on the drives (spreadsheets, other important work documents, family pictures) and this is preventing me to do so.

please help me out soon. thanks a bunch guys.

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Are these onboard USB ports or is it a USB pci card?

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Are these onboard USB ports or is it a USB pci card?

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or both?

[badben25]

there are six usb ports in total. 2 onboard at the back, to which my mouse and printer are currently connected with no problems. then there are 2 in the front which are connected to the mainboard (obviously). last there's an extra usb card which has 2 ports on it, it came with the motherboard. this problem happens on all ports. it never happened in the 5 years and several formats i have done (about 9 including this one) but now all of a sudden I have to face this :S

[cmpm]

Ok. disconnect everything except your mouse and keyboard if it's usb also.

Go to Device Manager.
Control Panel-System-Hardware-
Device Manager button.
Under USB Serial Bus Controllers-
Uninstall every device it lists.
Put your XP cd in the drive.
Restart Computer.
Do not "Push any Button to Boot from CD".
Windows will load normally and find the hardware.
When it finds it, it will look for the best drivers for the USB hardware.
After it installs the hardware, check and see if it works correctly.

Post your results, and if that didn't fix it we can try a couple of other things.

----

1 is sometimes the problem is in the bios, where it got set to not recognize certain hardware.

2 is to update the drivers, but that's kind of what we are doing now.

Then there is of course 3 which is someone else knows the answer

Edited by cmpm, 14 June 2008 - 05:05 AM.