USB Woes

I'm trying to reinstall Windows on a Dell machine with a new hard drive, and am having some serious trouble with the USB Controller. After installing Windows and most of the drivers, I still had a USB Controller lisded with a yellow exclamation point under Other Devices. At one point, tech support told me that because I hadn't installed their drivers in the correct order, I might have to start from scratch (something I really don't want to do because I've already installed a ton of software.) She also gave me a driver that when I run gives me a message that says "This computer does not support this operating system." After an attempt to install the driver mannually, I managed to install 2 USB Root Hubs, and Intel(R) 82801DB/DBM USB Universal Host Controller 24C2 and 24C4, but still a USB Controller listed under Other Devices with a problem. After a second call to Dell, the agent told me that the laptop was still detecting an old USB device that had been connected before the new hard drive was even installed! Sounds a little suspect to me. He said that if I just reconnect the USB printer that was installed before the old hard drive failed and install the drivers it should go away. I'm not in the same location as my printer and won't be for a week. Can I start using this machine or might I have to completely start over like the first agent said? Is the second agent right or full of it? Thanks for the help and sorry about the long post.

 

Your first Dell tech person may be right. I recently reinstalled windows in a Dell PC, and was installing the drivers from the Dell resources CD. I'd done this a number of times before. But when I looked in 'device manager' to see what was going on, there was yellow everywhere. I called Dell, and it was explained to me that I had to install a driver for a certain controller FIRST. He went on to say that I'd have to reinstall windows AGAIN, and then install the controller driver first, and then the others. Which I did. I guess now that Dell is firmly on top, they don't have much incentive to clean up their act. Echos of Microsoft?

pjblevin

 

You really should work-out problems like this BEFORE you "Install a ton of software". The OS needs to be complete and stable before you go adding things.
Are you using a full version of Windows or a restore CD from Dell?
Are we talking about WinXP or 2000?

 

Alright, think I solved this one on my own. As soon as I installed Windows XP SP1 using Windows update, my USB driver was detected and seems to have been installed properly. Still need to test if it actually works with a peripheral USB device but seems to be working ok.

 

Sp1 provides support for USB2, the drivers for USB1 should have worked before that.
Just for the record, the Windows up-dates should be installed and you should be sure that everything is stable before installing additional software. The only real exceptions being AntiVirus and/or Firewall.