Laptop USB Port half working

Supernova

I have a four year old HP DV7 laptop.

Last year one of the USB ports would only work with a mini mouse receiver dongle - all other devices such as powered hubs, hard drives and audio interfaces would fail to be recognised or the drivers would not be installed.

I reinstalled Windows 7 for various reasons recently and it didn't solve the problem despite a total refresh of drivers.

It's a little different now with hard drives - it starts to display a choice of open actions but immediately then tells me multiple times that the drive needs formatting.

Is this a hardware fault primarily do you think?

Cheers!

creativemay

It sounds like the port is damaged slightly - have you tried them in other ports in your laptop?

If so, maybe try to install the driver software again for each device?

Supernova

Thanks creativemay,

The other ports are fine so I think you are right about the slight damage.

Actually, I just connected the powered hub with keyboard and mouse and pushed the USB plug upwards a bit and it seems to be fine! Same with an external disk but I probably wouldn't trust it for sustained data transfer.

Hmm I'll see how it goes but I'm glad we had this conversation.

:-)

silentkiller

Eurgh I had this on my old Dell (around 4 years old too) but I muddled on as it has 2 other ports, finally it just went to the great scrapheap in the sky (and by that I mean I palmed it off on my dad and got a new one) but I know how frustrating it is.
Mine would work and then not work, and then work again.

Sometimes it's a case of turning on and off a few times. (such a pain I know )

victor2

Something that's worked with me for apparently dead USB ports is to power down the computer and disconnect the mains, plus remove the battery in the case of a laptop. Power back up after about a minute and they all work again.
Does sound like you have a defective port, but costs nothing to try...

Supernova

The whole turning off and on thing never worked but then I hadn't discovered the knack.

Kind of strange how the nano dongle works perfectly every time but a normal USB plug never did. As long as that port works for the mice and keyboards using my new discovery I'm happy :-)

Ta

bluesnake

If it is not a usb connector issue, back your disk up first before you follow the video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVdjIwu5Eoo

rockin_plumber

My dad's USB ports stopped working on his pc...
The only thing that worked in them was his wireless mouse receiver...
Installed and uninstalled drivers multiple times...
Last resort a got a USB card from ebay for a fiver and installed it....
They worked fine... And all the other ports started working as well!