Device Manager Not Recognizing USB Ports.

[BritishKid]

Hey lads,

So I am not a computer genius, but I am not completely clueless and I have been struggling with this issue for a while now. I have searched high and low trying to find a solution.

My computer will recognize the two usb ports on the rear of my cpu (I also have 2 on the front). The two on the front however are not only not recognized in Device Manager, but when I plug a device such as my thumb drive or mouse it seems to turn the power off of the rear ports. Eg. If my mouse is plugged into one of the USB ports on the rear, and I plug my thumb drive into one of the front ports, my mouse will completely turn off and will not return until the other device is unplugged and Windows is restarted. I am not sure if this is a driver or hardware issue or what, but any help would be much appreciated as I am a student who has very little money to replace things.

Computer Specs as follows:

Asus Computer with Intel Pentium 4 CPU, 2.40GHz
512 MB of RAM
Windows XP PRO SP3
NVidia Geforce 100/200 graphics card

I am not sure what other info you may need, but if you ask I will tell.

Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope lol.

 

[office politics]

Device Manager does not display devices that are not connected to the Windows XP-based computer

 

[BritishKid]

That was very vague. Is it an Issue with my hardware? Or what?

 

[kmote]

Easy way to tell whether it is a software issue is to boot to a linux live CD. If the USB ports work then it is obviously a software problem of some kind.

 

[KSoD]

Okay now that article is confusing at best. I mean just read the title.

Device Manager does not display devices that are not connected to the Windows XP-based computer

Well i would certainly hope that the Device Manager is not showing devices that are not connected. Would be kinda hard for the system to know what the devices are if they are not connected at all.

The main thing i can suggest is to make sure that your chipset drivers are up to date.