bit of help needed please

buster1967

my sister has bought a new compaq pc and ive tried to connect my usb stick to the usb ports,and even though it lights up the pc doesnt recognise it. on my pc as soon as i put the stick in any usb port it picks it straight up.

is there a setting on the pc i can use so the pc recognises anything that is put into the usb ports.

albertross_2

have you tried all the usb ports

donny-gal

the auto mode may be switched off, have you looked in My Computer for extra drives?

conar686

May also only have USB 2 skts - or other way round - your stick may be USB2. Try anohter stick

MAC

buster1967

yes ive tried all usb ports and they are doing the same/my usb stick is only usb1 version so the ports are backward compatible i think/how do i get the auto mode set right in case it is switched off.

thanks for all replies.

woo

as far as i know there is no auto mode, if your usb ports are enabled then it will detect it.
Do you get the 'new hardware found' popup?
Have a look in the device manager (right click my computer> properties > hardware > device manager) are there any devices showing with a yellow exclamation mark next to them? If not expand the universal serial bus tree and your hardware should be in there, right click and choose enable if it is disabled.

sco0ter

Go to device manager and so a search for new devices while the USB stick is plugged in

italiastar

Usb 2 sticks definately work with USB 1 ports and as far as I know, the reverse is also true. Sounds possibly like a driver issue - although Windows XP should pick up the stick. I'm afraid to say that Compaqs have always had their quirks.

Snookboi

It may be the USB ports have been disabled in the BIOS.

When you boot up the computer it should tell you which key to push to enter BIOS, if you do this you should be able to find an option in there somewhere which will tell you if the drives are enabled or disabled.

woo

Wouldn't have thought the USB ports were disabled as the lights activate on the drive - if they were disable i'd assume that there would be no power from them either?

ManAtHome

No problem with USB sticks on the 2 Compaqs I have (oldish desktop running WinME and 2 year old lappy on XP). On XP it'll gurgle around for a while coming up with a list of programs you don't want to use to access the drive (grrr) - does this with any USB disk/cd/stick.