New Acer laptop 1 USB port not working

[stantheman1976]

I bought an Acer Asipre 7741G-6426 laptop 5 days ago and last night one of the USB ports stopped working. There are 2 ports on the right side of the machine. I had a USB headset plugged into one and an external hard drive plugged into the other. Sometime in the middle of the night I woke up and the port with the hard dirve is not working anymore. It is still providing power for any device I plug in but Windows doesn't see anything plugged in. Both the other 2 are working normally.

I've tried uninstalling the drivers and letting them reinstal fresh and also looked in my BIOS and updated it but there's nothing in there about USB ports. The Acer BIOS is fairly basic it seems.

[budz]

IMHO I'd return that laptop from where ever you bought it from. It's obviously defective. Just my 2 cents!

[stantheman1976]

I bought it from B&H Photo so I have to check their return policy on computers. I've seen this problem mentioned in some Google searches and it might be some kind of software conflict. Wouldn't the port stop powering devices if it was bad?

[jman98]

You might check the Acer website and see if there are any updated USB drivers for your laptop over what you have.

I am not an expert in the inner workings of USB technology but I would think that being able to provide power over a USB power is completely independent over being able to use that same port to successfully recognize an attached device.

[classfour]

First: Reboot; second: Switch to the other USB port and see if the drive becomes available. Put another device in the USB port.

No, the port would still output 5 volts DC. If windows lost the driver, or if there is a conflict - you may have this problem.

You can go into device manager and uninstall the device, then scan for hardware changes and see if the drive shows up.

If the wrong driver is installed, this will not correct it.

You may want to see if windows itself can see the disc. Go to Administrative Tools; Computer Management; Storage; Disc Management;

Action; Rescan discs.

If the drive does not show up, it may just be that the volume needs to be added.

[deckard8]

Run UsbDeview > http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/usb_devices_view.html

Unplug usb peripherals & delete the usb devices using UsbDeview.
Plug usb peripherals back in to re-detect and install again.

[aedipuss]

did you install the win7 sp1? or is the machine set to automatically install windows update? there is a bug in the sp1. easiest way to fix is to go into device manager and delete all the universal serial bus controllers. reboot and windows will reinstall using the new sp1 controllers rather then the sp0 controllers that are mistakenly not removed.

[freebird73717]

I'm in agreement with budz. Return the dang thing. 5 days old and it's already having hardware issues. Not a good sign.

edit
aedipuss
what's the bug in win7 sp1? I was going to install this on my wifes laptop tomorrow (via iso burned to dvd).

[aedipuss]

the usb bug only occurs using the sp1 .exe file or WU download. not a slipstreamed iso. there are 3 usb sp0 .sys files in the system32 folder that are not updated to sp1 as they need to be. the usb sp1 files are put in the other correct places but not there and it causes conflicts.

[stantheman1976]

It's a brand new laptop. I didn't do the Windows installation and have updates set to ask for action.

I ran USBDeview and it didn't seem to help. I'm taking a wild guess and assuming when there are 3 USB ports on the machine and it only lists 2 that's not a good sign?

I am going to return it then. At least I bought it from somewhere with a good return policy.

[budz]

^^^^Returning it is the best thing....

@aedipuss: I did the W7 SP1 install from the windows update on my W7 pc....gonna have to check if I got USB port issues....thanks for the heads up on that!

[Bjs]

Depends on the external hard drive used ?

1: Large external's must have own power supply
2: Smaller portables generally come with a Y cable ... requires 2 usb ports from laptop.

If "1" was without external supply the ports been overloaded ... devices which draw little current may still connect but may not fully work

[AlanHK]

Try something simple and low power, like a USB thumb drive or a mouse in the various sockets.

If you have a CD drive, you could boot up an Ubuntu Linux system and check out the hardware under that.
Than you'd know if it was Windows or hardware at fault.

[stantheman1976]

What I had plugged in when it stopped working was a powered external hard drive. It was working when I went to bed and not working when I woke up. Any device I plug into that port won't show up but does get immediate power. The other 2 ports work fine.

I am going to call in a few minutes and get an RMA from B&H.

[stantheman1976]

I called Acer tech support just for the fun of it. Their best suggestion was to use the system restore and go back to factory defaults. That's what I expected. So I restored it and that port still doesn't work. I called B&H and got an RMA and its going back tomorrow.

[budz]

I called Acer tech support just for the fun of it. Their best suggestion was to use the system restore and go back to factory defaults. That's what I expected. So I restored it and that port still doesn't work. I called B&H and got an RMA and its going back tomorrow.

You did everything you could to try and figure out the problem. Good to hear you're sending it back. Are they sending you a replacement or are you getting full refund?

[stantheman1976]

I requested a replacement. I really don't think Acer is better or worse than any other brand. Others might have a different opinion. Any computer can have have any part go bad, even out of the box. I just had the bad luck of having it happen to me. Plus I don't think I'm going to find one with the same specs in a different brand for the same price. B&H is good about their return policy. The only bad part is it will probably tke at least 2 weeks to get it back and in the meantime I'm stuck having to borrow a machine to work on the projects I'm doing right now.

[stantheman1976]

Quick update:

I sent the laptop back to B&H and got a replacement. When they got it back it was listed for $677 when I originally paid $739 for it so they refunded the original amount and also honored the 2nd day air shipping I had originally paid for so from the day I sent it back to last the day I got it was 12 days.

I've had it for 5 days again now and so far so good. If something does happen to go wrong again while it's still retunable I'll get a refund and go buy something else in store somewhere.

[freebird73717]

Wow. Good customer service

[stantheman1976]

That was the only good thing about the situation. B&H works hard to make their customers happy. That's why my wife and I always order from them when we are able.