Thinkpads Forum

Greetings all,

I have a Z60t Thinkpad model 2511-HAU, I ran into some serious windows issues last week, which led to me wiping everything and doing a full recovery install. I have reinstalled Windows XP, with all the updated drivers and have almost got the system back to working order, except the usb ports aren't functioning. Essentially, when I plug in a flash drive for instance it will show up in the hardware manager, but doesn't show up in 'my computer' so I can't do anything with it. I'm almost 100% certain the usb ports are ok physically, as the flash drive lights up when plugged in. I know the USB drivers are part of windows, and I have tried deleting and updating the drivers to no avail. More annoyingly, the device manager says everything is ok with the usb controller. Of course I'm out of warranty and lenovo's forums weren't much help so I figured I'd try here. Thanks for reading, any and all is greatly appreciated.

mac

ps the nick sums up my frustration with all things windows

Try the following:

Right-click on My Computer and select Manage
Select Disk Management

Does it show now?

Just tried that, all I see are the two hard drive partitions.

Have you installed the Intel Chipset Support and Windows XP Update Modules? Have you run Windows Update?

Intel Chipset Support for Windows 2000/XP - ThinkPad R52, T43/p, X41, X41 Tablet, Z60m, Z60t

Common Microsoft Windows XP update modules (US only) - ThinkPad R51e, X41 Tablet, X60, X60s, X60 Tablet, T60, T60p, Z60m, Z60t, 3000 C100, N100

If the above doesn't work, have you tried uninstalling the USB devices in Device Manager and rebooting?
EDIT: See also: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310575

Thanks for the suggestions so far guys. I have updated the bios and the embedded controller to the latest versions, and Windows is updated through service pack 3. When I try uninstalling the the usb hubs/controllers and restart, windows doesn't automatically detect them as new hardware. When I reinstall them manually using the device manager, the process goes smoothly, but the flash drive doesn't function as it should. I have discovered then when I plug in a usb device it shows up in the device manager under 'other devices' and its flagged as not working correctly, and says I need to install a driver. Thoughts??

I do believe some flash drives require special drivers. Normally these drivers are installed on the flash drive and loaded from the drive when installing. First see if Windows Update can find the drivers. Next see if the manufacturer of the flash drive has any drivers on their website.

I've had memory sticks that have given up the ghost and nothing can get them to work ... so they go in the dustbin. They are as cheap as chips these days.

Advice: Try another memory stick.