hi,

i have a sony vaio laptop running on xp. ive been having some problems with my usb ports:
-my plug and play mouse will light up and be detected in both my left and right usb ports, but it will only function on the right
-my plug and play webcam will work on either the left or right port.
-when i tried installing a graphics tablet, the device lit up but the computer failed to recognize it, prompting me repeatedly to plug it in during the install.
-all other plug and play devices, such as ipods/flash drives/digital cameras get detected ("Add New Hardware" comes up) and it prompts for driver installation, despite these devices being plug and play. the search for drivers always fails, even if i manually install a driver. under my device manager, the device type will show up with an exclamation point.


please help! this is so frustrating bc i cant store anything!

sounds like your USB ports have failed. Probably a jolt or something broke an internal connection. Have it serviced. Hopefully it is still under warranty. Could be something as simple as a solder connection broken at the interface or a loose wire.

I would definately say it probably a hardware issue.

thanks tedster.

wow that sucks because i think my laptop has always been this way... it mustve been jolted before i even bought it.

would not having the microsoft service packs installed affect this? ive been reading around and not really understanding whats going on, but i keep seeing service packs mentioned. i just installed sp1 but i dont see a difference.

You will need SP2 to get full USB functionality.
Did you (re)install the USB-drivers from the Sony-CD AFTER you applied SP1?

Highly unlikely. Updates don't affect USB. USB is hardware controlled almost enitely by BIOS.

It wouldn't hurt (might not help any either though) to remove the usb root hubs in the device manager and let windows redetect them on reboot.

Would it be a hardware issue if functionality is retained? It seems like the error comes up when Windows is trying to find the right driver. My webcam took forever to get working, but only after I manually sorted through the install CD and manually installed the drivers instead of letting the auto install program do it. It works fine on either port.


Another thing is I notice that Windows never searches online for the driver either. I think it's more of a configuration issue....

possibility, but most USB drivers are inherent to the motherboard. I've never really heard of a USB driver going bad. They're pretty much the same.

You could try deleting the drivers and having Windows reinstall them. If it still fails, your USBs probably have gone bad on the hardware side. This is not uncommon with laptops.
Laptops take a lot of abuse and it would be very easy for a little wire that connects your USB to break a solder or come loose internally.