Hi,
I have an Dell Inspiron 700M. The USB ports have been erratic for a long time - they particularly seem to have trouble recognizing my mouse and some flash drives for some reason. Sometimes they work, frequently I get a "device not recognized" message. Sometimes they see the device but it doesn't work, etc.
Originally I got a port replicator which was pretty much useless. Then I got a card with 2 extra ports - that works fine - even supports a hub with 4 more ports. Recently, due to an optical drive issue, my motherboard was replaced, I deleted partitions and reinstalled Windows (XP pro) and reinstalled drivers, made sure BIOS was up to date - the works. I either have lost the drivers CD or they never sent it to me so the drivers were downloaded from the Dell website. Same usb problem. I spent a long time on the phone with Dell yesterday. I have to say, although they are far from perfect, their support is better than it was a few years ago, especially in the upper tiers. They reinstalled the drivers (I may have done them out of order) but couldn't get it to work. I also now have missing drivers for a "mass storage device" which they can't find drivers for. They are researching it and supposed to call me back.
I read about this problem from a post a few years back and I think I have covered the suggestions made. Any new discoveries I can try? Dell is suggesting that I may need to reinstall. They say I couldn't have done a complete reinstall because I don't have the network driver on CD and couldn't have connected to download the other drivers. Does that make sense? Is there more than one way to wipe everything out and reinstall? I also reset everything back to factory settings prior to the reinstall.
It is sounding to me like this is a problem with the 700M and I just need to continue to live with it. Any clarification and/or suggestions would be most welcome.
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