I’ve had the dreaded Windows Vista for exactly a year now and I just had my first real “issue” with the OS. It was the dreaded Windows Vista “USB Device Not Recognized” error that seemed to appear after a quick power blip in my home.
For those of you not familiar with the famous Windows Vista USB Device Not Recognized error, I’ll give you a quick synopsis: you are using Windows Vista and minding your own business when suddenly a little pop-up message appears and tell you, surprise! you have a “USB Device Not Recognized!” There’s an annoying little bell that rings and you click on the stupid pop-up bubble and get.. well… nothing.
At least for me I saw nothing. And here’s the problem: you can’t find anything wrong so you can’t actually fix anything. Windows Vista doesn’t tell you which USB device is not recognized, which USB port has the problem or what it thinks is happening. The error message “USB Device Not Recognized” is just about completely meaningless. But every 30 seconds the bubble pops up again with that annoying little bell.
So I did what I do whenever I hear a discouraging sound coming from my car engine: I turned up the volume on my iTunes and promptly forgot about the message. Eventually I got smart and just turned the Windows Alert sound off.
After a few days the error was still popping up and though I couldn’t hear the bell, the bubble was troubling me. Other people have spent hours searching through documentation and reloading Windows Vista from scratch and downloading USB drivers. I am far too lazy to do that anymore, so I just went searching on the internet for the stupidest most implausibly easy solution I could find.
And it worked.
The solution is simple:
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1. Unplug (not just turn off) you PC.
2. Unplug all your USB devices from your PC (and, heck, any power supplies as well)
3. Wait 30 minutes or more.
4. Plug in your essential USB devices (keyboard, mouse).
5. Plug in your PC, turn it on.
6. Pop in the rest of your USB devices.
Ta-da, your Windows Vista USB Device Not Recognized Error is solved. This worked for me. I actually did it once without unplugging the USB devices and the problem went away for about three days and then appeared again. I did it again, taking out all my USB devices and I’ve been going for a couple weeks now with no problem.
I thought about trying to sell some sort of wacky device that would help you pull the plug out of your computer, much like my iPad invention for fixing that dreaded sad iPod icon. But then I realized: I’m too lazy for that, too.
Instead you can just thank me with large unmarked bills.
68 Responses to “How To Fix that USB Device Not Recognized Error in Windows Vista”
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Timothy Roller says:
You almost made me cry. I had this exact same problem with a brand new Vista 64 Sony laptop. I was sure it was a fried controller chip, but after talking to 4 techs, nobody could come up with a solution. I searched the web but somehow didn’t type the exact search string needed to get this answer. A month of hell with Sony support later (never buy a Sony, I won’t again), I got a new laptop. This one ran for a week, then the same problem. Found your solution, tried it out, voila, fixed. I went through all that for nothing, but at least I didn’t have to go through it again thanks to you.
January 8th, 2009 at 5:28 pm -
mr.borko says:
you are the king
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Lex Talionis says:
Oh my gosh, I didn’t think it would work but I tried it…It worked! You rock!
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irtaza says:
well i guess i can try cuz i need my usb back
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Mark says:
Hey, I’ve had this problem with my Sharp Laptop for AGES. For me, ANY usb device will not work with windows vista basic (e.g. mouse, keyboard, flash drive, printer…) I’ve read about the same method in so many different places but none of the solutions has worked for me =(
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Bill says:
Sheer genius! 2 weeks of madness resolved in 30 minutes! THANK YOU, THANK YOU SAM I AM!!!!!!!!!!!
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Kate says:
I’ve tried that several times, to no avail. It’s weird because the device gets enough power to be recognized, and light up, but will not work or show up under a new drive name. I’ve read so many threads about this, but no help appears.
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robi says:
does’t work for me – tried 10 times
no usb device is working
so far-
reinstalled vista
bios set up
updated/reinstalled driversall for frustation.
any help will be highly appreciated -
Scot Anderson says:
It never ceases to amaze me what we all, myself included, come to accept as permissable reality from a manufacturer of software. Vista, and Microsoft, is suddenly denying access to external devices. So we fix this by turning things off and letting them settle. Ah, ok, so sorry. Forgive me for thinking that computer science is a finite quantity. Thank you for Unix and for MAC. At least there’s an alternative for those of us who wish it.
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Cellar Dweller says:
Well I know this is all over the net about fixing this but I’ve come to realize what is causing it. It is a Disk Drive under Device Manager called ASAP USB Device.
I’ve found that without even rebooting, changing anything, or even shutting down. For some people shutting down and leaving off may not be an option.
Try this. Go to \Windows\inf folder and search or highlight something and type disk.inf – once you find this file right click on it and pick install, it should load up your missing or unknown device.
Hope this helps and it will keep you from rebooting or changing anything. This is used when everything works fine for months then upon a reboot out of nowhere you get the error, it may also fix issues for those that have other issues with USB devices not being recognized.
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Henry says:
Sigh… its been 11 minutes noW. I hope your method works. ATTENTION!! If you have a laptop, you should take out the battery or else this method WON’T work..
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Karina says:
Well I tried what Cellar Dweller said and that said The INF file you selected does not support this method of installation. So yeah, I guess I’ll try taking the battery out of my laptop.
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Bill Bock says:
I tried this on a Sony laptop with Vista 32 bit Home Edition and it worked great. Tks
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Karin says:
Thank you, thank you, thank you! I have a security device I use for my software for work, and my computer quit recognizing the device (because the USB port was messed up and kept popping up with the bubble message). I’ve tried everything. I even ordered a new device thinking maybe it was messed up. Once I tried your solution, it worked!
Thanks so much!!!
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toko says:
do you turn of your computer first and then unplug everything or do it while th ecomputer is on ?
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Gustavo says:
Unbelievable!!! Unbelievable!!!
It worked! It really worked! Man, thank you so much!
I’ve been looking for it for many days! And nobody had the awnser!
The problem was in my laptop. Just one thing that I want to point out is that you have to make sure that you took off the battery after you do step 2.Thank you again!
And I hope that it will help other people with the same problem.(excuse my english, I’m from Brazil)
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Edith says:
thank you so much!!!!
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Caragh Heenan says:
Hey, I’ve tried to reset my computer multiple times, I’ve tried deleting/uninstalling drivers etc, I’ve tried everything that I’ve seen on the many.. many… forums.. and nothing works. With your problem, is it just that the bubble is popping up but you can still use all the devices? For me, all my usb devices work except one that doesnt seem to be “recognized”… I get the bubble AND it doesn’t show up in my removable devices list. But it works fine on another computer. It’s just my laptop that has troubles with it.
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Jan B says:
Unfortunately, it does not work for me. The bubble keeps appearing, sometimes once every three seconds. And this despite the fact that I have done what you said, that the computer has been disconnected from the mains for a day, that I first deleted the INFCACHE.1 file, etc.
What I think particularly bothersome, is that the message even keeps appearing in SAFE MODE, with no drivers loaded and not a single USB device connected, including mouse, keyboard and USB routers!I have a HP Pavilion 9380 with Windows Vista 64 Home Premium. As far as I can deduce from other postings in the Netherlands, HP could not solve the problem when another guy sent in his portable.
Got another idea? -
Jan B says:
My problem has been solved! In my HP Pavilion, I have a removable extra HP Media Drive of 500 GB. That drive seems to be malfunctioning! It is internally connected to a USB port, so when I thought all USB devices were disconnected, this one wasn’t! Just connecting the faulty disk drive to my notebook, transferred the error to that computer. The drive is still under garantee, so I guess I’ll just go to the store for a hardware exchange. Thanks to everyone!
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Mike T says:
Thanks Tom for an unbelievably easy fix! I had the dreaded “USB device not recognized” error on my server and could not run my external HDD back- up as a result – a very worrying situation as can be imagined. Tried some reg fix software with no solution then did as you suggested – unplugged for 60secs, restarted and re-connected my external HDD – all going like a Boeing! Thanks again!
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RoBert says:
It happened to me this afternoon. Several thunderstorms rolled through, Power to the house never went out, The UPS beeped once but never kicked on. Buuuuuuuuut I got this nag. I have three USB plugged in, only the mouse was turned on(Scanner and EBU were the others) Started getting the nag at (I swear) 1.5 second intervals. It was for a USB port that had nothing plugged in. Reboot, reboot, re-installed drivers, reboot, Poop. Turned the noise off and went searching. Here I came. Turned the machine off, Unplugged the machine, went for dinner. Felt guilty, joined a health club, came home and turned everything back on. GREAT! ten minutes running and the world is normal, at least for now, again. Thanks for your simple fix. Rob’t
Win Vista 64bit and a bunch of other high end toys. -
Elaine A says:
I have the same problem – tried everything above, and nothing worked. Just spent 3 hrs on the phone with the tech support guys from Dell and they couldn’t fix it either without reformatting my hard drive and reinstalling Vista. I’m about to lose my mind because I don’t have any way to back stuff up without a USB hookup!
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Jeff vw says:
Absolutely brilliant! Granted, a shitty deal to have the problem at all, and apparently a common one at that, but you definitely just saved me some serious cash. I found the problem was from plugging in my iPod and have read that this is a common occurrence among iPod/Vista owners. I’m a bit skeptical now to plug it in again, but I suppose the solution if it doesn’t work is as easy as 1,2,3. Cheers!
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raj says:
Hey, I’ve tried to reset my computer multiple times, I’ve tried deleting/uninstalling drivers etc, I’ve tried everything that I’ve seen on the many.. many… forums.. and nothing works. With your problem, is it just that the bubble is popping up but you can still use all the devices? For me, all my usb devices work except one that doesnt seem to be “recognizedâ€â€¦ I get the bubble AND it doesn’t show up in my removable devices list. But it works fine on another computer. It’s just my laptop that has troubles with it.
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Tinkertailor says:
Thank you thank you! It worked.
During the process I did pick up some Win Vista anomolies though – selected “Shut Down” and then the computer promptly restarted on its own – weird!
Second time round it actually shut down – I removed the battery – rebooted and it picked up the usb’s again.
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Ravi says:
If you are facing the problem connecting one specific device, replacing the USB cord might help – sometimes.
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kcclubkirby says:
Oh my, this worked perfectly for me! Thank you!
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Mike says:
Thanks Jan B!! My problem was also my 500GB HP Personal Media Drive.
Jan B says:
My problem has been solved! In my HP Pavilion, I have a removable extra HP Media Drive of 500 GB. That drive seems to be malfunctioning! It is internally connected to a USB port, so when I thought all USB devices were disconnected, this one wasn’t!
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Khan says:
You are really the king. Your solution worked perfecly well for me. Thanks a lot.
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kapil says:
This works like a charm.
Just power off everything.Remove all USB devices.
Let power be off for about 10 minutes.Before putting power on plug back all USB devices.Power on – Voila! – Everything gets recognized.Works like a charm!
A possible cause is the cache that stores the error if it occurs once.Also putting your puter to sleep and then waking it up causes somes USB devices to not get recognized though they continue to work fine.
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huggy_d1 says:
As a long-time I.T. type, I was highly skeptical of the proposed solution, much for the same reasons as most folks.
Out of sheer frustration, combined with the simplicity of the offered solution, I tried it.
I’m extremely happy to report all my USB devices are happy as can be. I deleted the infcache.1 file, and followed the shutdown/battery removal steps (laptop), waited impatiently, installed battery, powered up, and magic happened.
My external mouse is working. My bluetooth magically started working too. WOW is that ever weird.
Thanks!!!!
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rawashdeh says:
hehehe.. thank you mate. it really works easily.. once i had started looking how to fix this, i was so worried about how complicated this will be, but you made it easy.
Big thanks
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Phil says:
I have new XPS Studio 435T computer. The installation tech used the front usb port to transfer my old data, via a thumb drive. That worked just fine. The next week, the front usb port no longer recognizes anything I put into it, even though settings says it is working properly. What to do? Dell cant figure it out either.
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Fergie says:
Wow, many thanks — that worked great on my wife’s laptop. You da man.
- ferg
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Peter says:
Great tip! Being somewhat computer savvy I to was skeptical but decided to try it anyway with an addition that does the same thing but cuts the time down to about two minutes (longer if your computer is slow to start-up & shutdown).
To summarize:
1)Unplug all devices from your computer (USB & non-USB).
2)Completely shutdown your computer (not sleep or standby).
3)Unplug the power cord and if your computer is a laptop detach the battery.
4)Hold the power button down for 15 to 45 seconds (this “zeros†the stray electric charges which would otherwise force you to wait 10 to 30 minutes for them to dissipate natural).
5)Power on and reattach all devices. -
Manzur Ahmed says:
Simply amazing!!!
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ilaria says:
thank you!unbelivable, it works!!!!
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Michael Olsen says:
Ohhhh my God!!!! that worked out great!!!
Cant even believe it yet Best tip EVER!!
greets from Denmark
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Joy says:
You are the best!!! I was frustrated for 3 days trying to fix it and you solved my problem in 30 mins =D Thanks so much!!!!
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stella says:
tried this several times, and doesn’t work for me
I have this Maxtor external hard disk,I’ve plugged in other computer, it wasnt recognized either. and when i plug in another device on my laptop, other devices can work except for my Maxtor hard disk that always being not recognized.
Help.. please :’(
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Gijs says:
Works like a charm!!
Not only is the annoying pop-up gone but I also had 30 minutes time to ride around on my bike. What a solution! -
David says:
Unbelievable! Even the 45 second method worked. Thanks heaps.
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victor says:
will try to fix this but how in the hell did you turn off that annoying alert!? disabling windows alerts didn’t work. whomever thought of this thing going off every 30 seconds or so is just plain STUPID! “tadoo tadoo” every 30 seconds. i am going out my mind!
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Tom Coffee says:
You can turn off the Windows Alert sound for Windows Vista in the Control Panel -> Hardware and Sound -> Change System Sounds.
I forget what the exact name of that bell is, but I think it’s something like “Windows Alert” or “Program Error”…
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David says:
Thank you so much good sir and a tip of the hat to you.
I have an Acer Aspire M1610 P.C. with several USB devices running off of a powered hub and from the P.C. itself. I was most dismayed when all of a sudden one day I had nothing expect for Microsoft branded peripherals which caused much vexation but alas thanks to you for the information that you take the time to post here I am glad to say I am up and running again with great relief and gratitude. I simply followed your instructions and tickitty~boo 15mins later all was well.Many thanks ~ David
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Chris McKay says:
THANK YOU!
This worked out perfectly!
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Nick Grimshaw says:
Had lost my hard drive – Tried power data recovery, no success, was looking at the potential of losing 10 years worth of data.
Tried turning it off for 30 minutes ( left it for 45 mins to be safe lol )
Genius everything now working again.
You’re a legend – thanks ever so much.
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rod sherwin says:
Didn’t work from me, but the problem started right after I got my new iPhone.
I cannot use any usb port on my gateway laptop. I am just a few hours away from ordering a pcmcia usb card.
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Curtis says:
this works for desktops but I have a laptop (all laptops acually have two batteries) so in order to completely shut down the machine you have to unplug it, take out the battery, then wait for about 2 hours for the backup backup battery to run dry
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RoundMan says:
All Laptops please invest in a powered hub.. Many laptops are using underpowered conections even today with so many USB devices out there (I personally love that). Even desktop machines will have power problems if the power supply is a bit underpowered (300 watt). I have a 450 watt powerr supply and I still added a 5 port powered usb hub and everything runs great (7 usb devices and adding more all the time).
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Suman says:
cool bro this work like magic i think microsoft will now have to take cre about their products
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Rod Sherwin says:
Just an update. I purchased a Syba 4 port usb express card to work around this problem. My computer give the same message regarding failing to recognize the device. So, this did NOT fix my problem. I still have no USB connectivity.
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Mike Binder says:
Ok well first off I want to explain from experience why this is happening… really beleive it or not it is you the users fault. See mostly this happens with the mouse. Why the mouse and why is it your fault you ask.. Well its simple. Its because of static electricity. I found this out because the past week I have been dealing with this issue alot and well it is cold where i live so i wear a coat. Now when i take my coat off from taking an outside smoke break I noticed i have a static discharge to my mouse then the problem occurs.
How to fix it well simply let you computer do a power discharge.. if it is a desk top simply unplug it for 30 mins and then restart it should be solved if it is a laptop turn it off leave the power cable in and take the battery out then take out the power cable replace the battery then reboot.
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Smurphalla says:
Amazing! I have a Vista 64 bit home version Toshiba and this worked where everything else I found on the net. Thank You!!!
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Chauduyphanvu says:
OK, I tried what Tom said but it didn’t work at first, so I decided to read more of what others said and noticed the battery thing. So this is what I did, I unplugged all the USB devices connected and the power supplies then shut my laptop down. Then I took the battery out and put it back in within seconds, and allowed the computer to have power on with all the cables and devices reconnected. And that’s all, that bubble doesn’t appear any more.
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tom says:
unbelievable!! it worked!
I spent so many hours, and still couldn’t figure out.thank you so much!
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tomas says:
not working for me is this because i have a laptop
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HAPPY says:
Thank you so much for your article. I was having the same issue on my toshiba laptop and tried all suggestions with no success. Your solution worked!
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Josh V says:
Ok.
So I tried this out, your cycling of the power and …
IT WORKED!
Oh my goodness, I was so relieved … it is a company laptop, and you have saved me hours of worry and troubleshooting time … much thanks …
So, if you encounter this in Vista 64 on a laptop …
1. Attach all your devices
2. Shut down the computer
3. Remove the devices
4. Remove the plug, then the battery
5. Wait 60 – 360 seconds
6. Turn back on and magic happens!Cheers All!
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Marc says:
Thanks!
I thought this was a joke but i tried it, and it worked. VAIO was turned off for 30 mins and now USB works again.
Wow.
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Hema says:
Excellent. After all of the attempts I made to revive the mouse. Even ordered a new mouse. Your method is simply superb. A complete reset of the computer helped. Thanks a lot for your post.
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U Balis says:
Removing the battery on my Sony VGN-SR93JS while the laptop was turned off worked! After reboot, my internally-connected fingerprint reader, which I was nearly certain was fried, came back to life!!!! No more “USB not recognized” pop-up boxes. Just brilliant! Many Thanks
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Ricardo says:
Thanks a lot!
It really works and it saved my day.
Keep up with the good work. -
Alan Grossmith says:
Sir, you are an absolute genius. Thank you so much. Had I gone back to the store we recently bought our laptop from they would have no doubt told us to restore it to factory settings (don’t you just love doing that!!!). If only all fixes were this easy life would be better.
Thanks again
Alan
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Peter says:
Such a simple solution and it works.
Thanks very much for posting this, completely sorted several bugs that were taking place and finally stopped the annoying pop up box that has been going on for a couple of weeks.
If your having problems like this then give it a try, you have nothing to loose but about 5 minutes.
Peter
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Sjoy says:
Thank you so much..
It really WORKED for me. -
Richard says:
I found that one day my Sony cyber shot stopped working with the USB not recognized problem on my HP Pavilion. Weird things is, we use mobile broadband which connects via USB, and if i unplug that, then the Sony device is recognized again. Same thing for my Web cam: only one USB device is recognized at a time, it doesn’t matter which one. I’ve tried all the options via MS website, I’ve done the unplug thing, I’ve restored XP a dozen times, I’ve uninstalled drivers and to no avail. It means i can’t Skype cos i need to connect via USB for both the broadband and the camera! Very frustrating