After windows updated itself (back in June) I lost my two USB ports on the left side of my laptop. The one on the right hand side still worked and after a system restore to before the update I got them back. This proves the hardware must be OK so what would cause them to stop working? After a short while Windows updated itself again and once again I lost the use of my two ports. After my uni exams were over I reinstalled windows (I like to reinstall once a year to keep my install fresh and to weed out old installs and files I no longer use). For a few days I had the use of all my USB ports again but before long windows got through a bunch of updates and again knocked my two left USB ports out. I have no idea what the update is but here is the spec of my laptop: HP dv3-2055ea (completely standard) Windows 7 Home Premium Any ideas? If it makes any difference, I noticed the loss when trying to connect my new phone with my laptop and had first thought the problem was linked to that. I have the Samsung Galaxy S2, I don't have Samsung's Kies program installed (as it was very slow and laggy for me), I do file transfers using windows explorer.
Could be a driver issue, search your model at HP support and try reinstalling the chipset driver (the usb ports are usually controlled by the mobo chipset).
I had this before too. I solved by 'removing' the USB ports from the Device Manager and then scanning for hardware changes to pick them back up again. Quick fix and works a treat.
RE: Windows Loss of USB ports after Windows 7 Update I had loads of problems after installing Windows 7 32 bit on my old HP Compaq NX6110, the USB ports kept going offline, I had to disable them in device manager and re-enable them every time to detect my USB pen drives, but I have now found a fix: If you drill down into the advanced power management settings thee is an option called 'USB selective suspend' turn this option off, my USB ports are now working fine. http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/147369-usb-selective-suspend-turn-off.html Hope this helps -=ByteMan=-
Thanks for your replies, I've tried removing and scanning and reinstalling drivers but I hadn't heard of the selective suspend. Having done that one of the two USB devices is working properly again. The second still isn't recognised by Windows, when I plug my USB mouse into it the mouse's light comes off and on repeatedly but it never ends up working. Here's a picture of my device manager to help illustrate what I mean:
