I posted in Tech Support and Software (looking for diagnostics software), but OT gets more traffic and I haven't been able to fix it yet. So if you have anything constructive to offer, please do.
I shut my computer down two nights when I left work. When I got in the next morning, I turned it on, and my USB mouse (mx500) wouldn't respond. It turns out that NONE of the USB ports work. I'm running xp pro with sp2 on a dell precision workstation. The ports are providing power, but they won't recognize the mouse or a usb key or my palm cable in any of the ports. No errors are showing up in device manager or windows event viewer. I uninstalled all the usb stuff from device manager, it redetected the ports, but still no devices work. I checked the BIOS and everything looks ok there. Nothing changed since I shut it down a couple of days ago. Can these things short out? Between this and everything else going on today at work I'm about at the end of my patience.
I've shut down/restarted the PC multiple times. I found something on google about clearning the "NVRAM", and Dell's support site gives instructions (going to BIOS, lighting up numlock, capslock, and scrolllock, then pressing alt+e, and its supposed to beep. It doesn't) and that didn't work either. Anyone have any ideas?? Is there some way to diagnose or test the USB ports with software or something? Dammit is this thing hosed?? Any help would be greatly appreciated!
I shut my computer down two nights when I left work. When I got in the next morning, I turned it on, and my USB mouse (mx500) wouldn't respond. It turns out that NONE of the USB ports work. I'm running xp pro with sp2 on a dell precision workstation. The ports are providing power, but they won't recognize the mouse or a usb key or my palm cable in any of the ports. No errors are showing up in device manager or windows event viewer. I uninstalled all the usb stuff from device manager, it redetected the ports, but still no devices work. I checked the BIOS and everything looks ok there. Nothing changed since I shut it down a couple of days ago. Can these things short out? Between this and everything else going on today at work I'm about at the end of my patience.
I've shut down/restarted the PC multiple times. I found something on google about clearning the "NVRAM", and Dell's support site gives instructions (going to BIOS, lighting up numlock, capslock, and scrolllock, then pressing alt+e, and its supposed to beep. It doesn't) and that didn't work either. Anyone have any ideas?? Is there some way to diagnose or test the USB ports with software or something? Dammit is this thing hosed?? Any help would be greatly appreciated!