Toshiba laptop USB ports both dead

[News]

Yet another computer problem!

Wifey has a Toshiba Satellite C650 laptop with two USB ports, which both suddenly died earlier today. Much browsing and experimenting, with zero result.

Things I've tried include :

Disabling power saving for each USB port

Uninstalling, via Device Manager, everything relating to USB ports. Windows 7 Home finds and reinstalls. No little yellow warning signs.

Multiple reboots, including removing battery, leaving for ten minutes, holding the power button with the battery removed.

Reset BIOS

An online service via Microsoft

Tried system restore. Various dates. All failed.

I have NOT tried HDD Recovery, because that is a last resort which will,I assume, blitz everything currently on the hard drive.

I do have an image of the hard drive, taken last December, but it is on USB, so cannot be used. Tried to copy it to DVD via Imgburn, but it is too big - over 7GB.

Everything else works. Not sure how this image thing works. Could I just copy everything on the image one at a time over our home network, assuming I can find where they were copied from? Or is that too simple?

Any other ideas?

Thanks!

[Jethro_uk]

Try a linux LiveCD boot (SystemRecovery maybe) and see if the ports work in that ?

[John Rumm]

You can always pull the drive out to image it etc on another machine. So you could image it to a file on another PC, then put it back to do a factory recovery. If that fails (or more tot he point highlights a USB hardware failure on the laptop) then you can use the external machine to image it back to its current state.

If it is a hardware failure, then you would need to track down a new motherboard for the laptop.

[David.WE.Roberts]

Have you tried attaching a USB drive (HDD/DVD/pen) then checking you can see it via the BIOS before you start to boot?

Could be a hardware fault on the ports.

Cheers

Dave R

[News]

Coincidentally, I have Mint 13 on disc here, having played with it, following the 'flavours of UNIX' thread.

I booted the Tosh from the DVD, and the mouse worked for a few seconds, then froze. Rebooted to Mint, and now the mouse does not work at all. Not sure what that tells me.

[Jethro_uk]

One of the reasons I abandoned Ubuntu was an incredibly subtle, but irritating bug to do with the mouse. Every so often, mouse clicks stopped working. I developed a theory that there was an invisible window which was trapping mouseclicks, as the mouseover events were still being processed.

When I initially posted this on Ubuntu forums, the initial deluge was people telling me it "must be my mouse". Sadly for them the machine was a dual-boot XP machine, which had worked 100% for 3 years. And continues to, to this day.

My brothers observation (it happened to him when he VNCd in once) was that it must be in the XWindows system, since it happened in GNOME and the other system (where everything begins with "K").

Anyway, I notice from subscriptions to my thread, that every so often someone else reports the same thing. 6 years after I did.

Debian and XFCE work fine for me now. On a different box.

The thing is, I am convinced this bug arose somewhere after 7.10, since that was my first install, and it worked fined for 6 months.

I *could* have changed the mouse. But the dual boot bit was for SWMBO who liked it. Also, changing hardware to suit an OS isn't really my idea of a good OS .....

[News]

Right. Just rebooted to Mint again, and the mouse is working. Well, it was. As soon as I clicked the Firefox icon, the mouse failed. The pointer continues to work via the touchpad, but not via the mouse.

[Chris K]

You might want to check whether it is a power issue or the USB logic itself. If you have something you could plug in that just uses power (eg a phone charger lead or novelty usb light or similar) you could see if power is reaching the socket. There is usually some sort of fuse that can go O/C but not really a DIY replacement unless you are good with SMD soldering.

If it is just a power problem, butchering a USB lead to feed the power from an external source might be a temporary measure (this is DIY after all).

Does it have a PCMCIA slot, there are USB cards for these available cheaply if the on board USB is dead.

Chris K

[John Williamson]

Or get a magnifying glass out and check for cracked joints on he USB sockets.

[News]

Well, I don't know what to say. Having booted into Mint several times, I thought I ought to check the drives seen by Windows, just in case it was seeing a USB memory stick or anything that was not there.

Rebooted, and the mouse is now working perfectly under W7.

I have spent all f'ing day playing with that thing, then it just fixes itself. Hurmph!

[alan]

If you have a clone disk you should/will be able to boot from it.

Attach your cloned disk to a usb port

Start up your laptop and press F2 before windows starts to boot to get into the (bios) start up screens

Change the boot order to make the USB port the priority

Quit and save the settings.

If the computer now boots up from the external cloned disk the USB ports are working.

The lights constantly flashing on the external disk will indicate that it operational.

If the USB port cannot be found then it will revert tom the second highest priority (internal disk) and boot from that.

This may give you a clue if the problem is a hardware or a driver problem.

It may be a problem on how the ports have been associated with each application - only certain applications may have failed. A utility such as USBdeview allows you to see how the applications are associated and allows deletion. USBDeview is at

Read the instructions on the web page At the bottom of the web page make sure that you download the correct version - 32 or 64 bit You may/will have to run it as administrator if you want to use the utility to change anything

[bert]

In message , News writes

Have you been to Toshiba Support Centre and checked for any software upgrades? My wife has an old Toshiba Satellite and the USB drivers on that area bit dodgy. Couldn't run a wi-fi dongle for any length of time without freezing.

[Bernard Peek]

It's common for the 5v supply in all of the USB ports to be protected by a single fuse.

[...]

Probably.

Dual layer DVDs can hold 8Gb.

[The Natural Philosopher]

look in the logs,. and try lsusb to see if there is a mouse attached to the system still.

Not got something drawing too much USB power?

[meow2222]

An easy thing to try is boot from a linux cd.

how many drives read dual layer?

NT

[The Natural Philosopher]

nearly all of them

[John Williamson]

The last one I saw that didn't was made in the 20th Century.

[Adrian C]

Tired mouse then :-p

[Andy Burns]

Polyfuse having healed itself after a period of being switched off?

[News]

I suppose that is the most logical answer, although I prefer Adrian's tired mouse :-)