USB 2.0 storage device malfunctioned in Windows XP. Unknown Device!?!

Who the hell is talking about that ?
Unpluggin while hot?
formatt?

you´ve gotten way off......

Do not trample on the next guys suggestion just because you think you got it.
Take look at nork´s answers he is clearlly ofering sugestions & solutions without attempting to diminish the other members.

Nouddy is barking at wrong trees or forgetting their native language , we are all
working on the original poster best interest.

Listen there are only 2 people here on techspot
that are capable of keeping the last word , those are :

The original poster saying ¨ I FIXED IT¨
or JULIO FRANCO the owner of everything....

read the main post !!!

that has nothing to do with what you are saying....
and that guy is still stuck on his problem....

By the way use the EDIT button ...Stop Double posting.

I have the same problem as all the rest of you - my vx9900 wont get recognized by my computer.

now, I've tried a whole bunch of things, including resetting my phone, reprogramming it, reinstalling the lg usb drivers like 5 or so times to my computer (compaq presario v4000), and using technoprobe's method of unplugging my laptop and removing the battery for like 50 minutes.

Unfortunately, my problem still remains, as every time I connect my vx9900 to the computer (using the MEK usb plug that I got like 2 years ago) the computer says "usb device malfunctioned...." etc.

I had an enV that used to get picked up by the computer using the same usb cable (and was able to transfer data with bitpim), but the phone got water damage, so currently I am using a brand new replacement enV. Sometimes the phone, when plugged in, will not generate that
error message on my computer, but then when I open bitpim, it doesn't recognize the phone.

so do any of you have suggestions for further actions? do you think this problem could originate from the way the phone is sending out its signal? or is it simply a usb problem with the computer?

OK, his post was over two years ago, and I KNEW something that simple could not possibly work. I resisted for a few days, but finally decided to try it. Problem Solved. And I joined this forum just to tell technophobe thank you and to reinforce to people that this actually worked.

Hard drive : Western Digital - WD2500XMS-00

I can pinpoint my problem, of "one of the devices has malfunctioned", to my Vista UMPC switching off without safely uninstalling it.

Technophobes method didn't help me.

I have around 180GB of downloaded material,. (And not the sort of material that can be viewed in public,.. like Baboons wrestling Ostriches) I don't have that stuff backed up. It was the back up. I just don't want to lose the files.

Iv'e tried using it on my desktop XP, in various ports. Iv'e read the first four pages. I'm not changing port types. I know it's the device and not the PC. Because every other device works fine. And iv'e tried on more than one PC.

A few people have suggested plugging the hard drive in, but even after that my toaster still displayed the error message.

I'm phoning Western Digital tomorrow to see if they can come up with a pheasable solution rather then "I am verry sorry but there is nothing we can do, (because our company make millions of these but we don't know how to fix them, we could take the data off for you and install it on another harddrive at a cost,. but we don't want to do that) but you can buy a new one because it has malfunctioned"

I'm going to ask them for the installation drivers and manually install the device, because the core problem is that it can't find the device driver to install or recognioze the device for what it is. I tried changing the hardware profile so the device reads as an external hard drive, but it still has no driver to work the device, meaning all that does is re-title it.

I'm really banking now on Western Digital saying that even though the device can't be repaired we can still take the data off.

I don't exactly want a member of the western digital repair team see a file named Hot_latino_drinks_horse_cum.avi

But, I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

I phoned up,. To no Avail. They said it can't be fixed ATALL if you

1. Right click the "My computer" Icon
2. Left click "Manage"
3. Left click "Disk Management"

"Do you see your hard drive. If No,. then phone up to see if it can be replaced via warranty"

Note : All Data maybe recovered by dedicated data recovery companies. If you have a western digital hard drive. After recovering the date you can still claim your hard drive under warranty. Some data may not be recovered. Some are no fee no data. It will cost, and will be not refunded via warranty.

Check WDC's site, under "Support" - then "Data Recovery" for a list of data recovery specialists.

Hope this info helps.

Another method to fix the USB "Unrecognised Device" probelm

First, thanks everyone for posting. This is a really sticky problem. I had the same problem with a USB HDD. The problem just started out of the blue, but I believe it was when I was running a program that was trying to open the HDD (Windows Backup) at the same time I was trying to disconnect it...

I tried the method detailed - unplug the PC from the power, wait 30 minutes etc. This DID NOT work for me. Still had an "Unknown Device" in Device Mgr.

HOWEVER, what did work for me was:

Open Device Manager
Uninstall the "Unknown Device" (Right-click, Uninstall)
Re-Scan for new devices

And Hey Presto all was well again!!!

NOW, whether the fact that I had powered down the PC beforehand mattered, I do not know...


UPDATE LATER

ARRGGGHHHH! After much stuffing around I found that it was a faulty connector all along! I squeezed the socket (on the end of a cable) so that it was a tighter fit and now it works fine every time!!!

Hats off and kudos to you Technophobe!

No apologies needed, as someone who actually repairs PCs for a living I'm always glad to learn a new trick and it worked a treat on my own PC which had been bugging me for a week now.

I've been through all the updating and reloading drivers thing and had eliminated hardware failure by booting into Linux and everything working fine, but had not completely disconnected at the mains. EDIT - Why does it work in Linux but not Windows XP?

Thank you, a simple elegant solution.

Paul

QUOTE
are you using the USB port on the back of the computer or ones that are located on the front? if they are ones on the front then the problem could be one of two things. 1. the front USB ports are not properly hooked up. 2. the case you are using doesnt support USB2.0 and only has USB 1.1 cables for the front connections.


Ha, Cool, I had the same problem when I plug my digital camera in the front ports. I tried the rear ports and it worked. I'm going to pick up a short USB extension to leave hanging out so I don't need to pull the tower out every time I want to download pictures off my camera.
Thanks ISS for that suggestion.

my kingston is having the same problem i think my cousin did it can you tell me how to fix it?

it works i just pushed on the jump drive and it in places and it worked again that was my emotion sycle

similar issue with USB DVD drive

I've been reading through these posts, and while I'm at work right now (unable to try a few of the proposed solutions), I thought I'd toss my issue out here and see if any further ideas come of it.
I've got Windows Vista x64 Ultimate on an Asus Crosshair II formula board with a Thermaltake 650W PSU, AMD phenom II x4 processor, nvidia geforce 285 video card...and a laptop size DVD burner which used to be plugged in via an IDE converter, and for which I recently bought an external USB case. It uses 2 USB ports - 1 is for data, and the 2nd is for power.
Initially, I plugged the burner into my two front panel ports as they were the most convenient to ascertain whether the case worked. It did. Drive showed up as an external, drive D, no issues.
I then took my computer apart (I custom-built my case and needed to work on it) and put it back together a couple weeks later. This time around, I ran the USB cables for the drive around to the back. All of a sudden, the drive is an "Unknown Device."
I'm first going to try hooking it to an extra set of "front panel" USB ports I have that I can run to a currently unused USB header on the motherboard. If that doesn't work I'll try the power suggestion posted about 3 years ago...
Incidentally, I have 6 USB ports on the back, but with this drive plugged in am only using 4 of them. I have a regular 500GB external hard drive running off one of the front USB ports that's worked just fine throughout all of this. It has its own power supply.
Only thing that makes any sense to me based on all my reading thus far is the "Unknown Device" error came up b/c of a lack of sufficient power to the DVD drive. Maybe all 6 ports on the back are hardwired into one header, while the front ports are just 2 sharing one header. So I'm hoping that by running it off a duplicate of the front port configuration, that'll solve the problem. We'll see...

Update to my message from yesterday - I plugged the drive in using a dual set of USB plugs running to one of the extra m/b headers. Turned the computer back on, and voila! it worked.
Again, only explanation I can think of is that the 6 ports on the back are sharing one power source, and so even if they're not all used, it's not enough power to run the drive. However, if there are only 2 ports sharing a single power source, it's enough. Weird...but that's what the evidence points to in my case.
Hopefully this will help others too...if you're having similar issues and are reading this, good luck!

the one with the intalled the driver manually works perfectly.
thank you.:grinthumb

That would be member mshep, who stated that in 2006 here: http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic23630.html#post258873 ?

My USB device error was caused by something blown in the southbridge,long story short ,was for me was to add a pci usb card.This worked for a further two years till i upgraded,even now the mobo is fine (gigabyte 939 3 gig) except for USB........talk about weird.......