windows2000 prof. usb recognition problems

Hello,

I searched the forums both from the internet and online, and although I got a couple of hits, the suggestions in those threads didn't seem to help me and the issues themselves weren't quite the same.

At work I have a computer with a windows2000 professional OS and for my job I am constantly taking pictures and then using them in my work.

I recently purchased a plug-and-play type smartmedia camera (Olympus D550) and I was really, really happy with how I plugged it in, turned it on, and bang, there was a drive that I could basically drag my pictures into a permanent folder from.

OK, so it worked about 10 times. Then, all of a sudden it won't recognize the camera. What's more, it now won't recognize ANY usb device, for instance my thumb drive, which I could have used to bring the pictures from home. The next alternative is to email them all to myself, but I'm hoping that somebody will have a suggestion. I've tried things like uninstalling the USB drivers in safe mode, turning the pc back on and then seeing if it will recognize the device, etc.

The thing is, there are clones of my machine throughout the office. I have duplicated this problem on two others now. (I use other PCs to get the pictures and then save them on our server, then access them from my pc). So I'm running out of computers that actually recognize the camera pretty fast (not to mention ruining usb functionality on the machines too... hmm, I should stop!).

Well, if anybody has any advice I will be extremely thankful. Thanks in advance. Also, I think I listed "intermediate," but I'd say I'm beginner/intermediate level pc user. If I left out some necessary info, I will definitely update with anything else that might be needed. But if you do offer a suggestion please explain it as if I were a "beginner" just to be safe, cuz I probably am. Thanks

 

Hi Hellisan.

What USB version are you using?

A common issue with symptoms such as the ones you describe is underpowered USB ports on the PC. If your hardware is all similar, it would account for seeing it on a group of machines. Not really sure why you had success at first though.

You might do better with a USB hub that has it's own power supply. You might also do better to upgrade to XP-pro on at least one PC since it has much better USB support than 2K does.

 

Hey Newt, thanks for taking the time, I sure appreciate it.

Ok, my boss set up these computers, but when you go to device manager, and open the USB controllers + it shows four host controllers and then it shows USB root hub 2.0 - and then four separate ones below that. I apologize for the lack of technical terms, but I think the quick answer to your question is usb 2.0. If the camera and/or card reader were 1.1, would that not work well? I always figured it must be backwards compatible, but maybe i have that ass-backwards, no pun intended.

 

More likely to be a problem if the devices want USB2 and the PC is loaded to use 1.1.

Take a look at http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=242062

Also might be of interest that Microsoft didn't really even begin to support USB2 until SP-4 and I'm pretty sure there have been hotfixes since that.