Thinkpads Forum

Maybe this could be useful to other users:

My brand new X201 suddenly lost one of its USB ports (the yellow one) yesterday. An external sound device (Creative Audigy 2NX) was connected to it at the time. I unplugged and replugged it, no result. I tried other USB devices, they were not discovered. Same after several reboots and various changes in the power settings (USB powering): the yellow USB port was logically 'absent', but was still delivering power.

I was about to return the machine to the service centre for repair. But I tried something, just in case: in the BIOS settings, I disabled USB, rebooted, enabled again USB in the BIOS, and rebooted. Now the yellow USB port is back. No idea of what happened.

Any explanation?

sounds like a problem in the windows driver. I don't suppose it will come back, but if it does, try booting a linux livecd, and see if the port is working. if it is, you'll have to reinstall windows (or shut it off in the BIOS again), if it isn't, you'll have to send it back to lenovo.

Daniel Bakker wrote:sounds like a problem in the windows driver. (...) if it is, you'll have to reinstall windows (or shut it off in the BIOS again), if it isn't, you'll have to send it back to lenovo.

It did it again... And again, the port was active out of Win7. So, it's definitely not a hardware problem.

However, before I reinstall W7 (don't really have time for that and my computer is primarily something to save time, not to waste it), I would like to understand why there might be a driver problem for only one of my three USB ports, all of them being supposed to be driven by the same pilot, and how this problem could be serious enough to justify a complete re-installation of the operating system just two weeks after I purchased the ThinkPad.

The yellow one is always on. Try to disable then re enable. I think this is in the TP Power Manager software.

if it happens again, I really recommend you try an ubuntu livedisk, it's easy to try and you can make sure the problem is driver related. it can still be a hardware/bios problem! and you don't want to waste time reinstaling windows when it doesn't help. bij the way, do you have the latest bios? try running system update.