Need help on USB for Inspiron 2650 laptop!

Hi All,

It's been 3 months of my research (with some reference from this site as well) and still not being able to make the things work! :-( This is the problem. I would try to be detailed but feel free to ask more details if you want.

USB1.1 ports on my laptop does not work, so I use an IOGEAR USB 2.0 GPU202 Cardbus card to connect to my USB devices. These USB devices are mouse, webcam, external drive, sandisk memory stick, Targus USB hub and Sandisk mp3 player. Unfortunately only the mouse and webcam work through the USB card. All other devices when connected appear in a standard way like this..."new hardware found, found USB hub, installed new hardware, and hub is ready to use." but further lies the issues. None of these devices work!

In case of external drive, I do not see its H:,I:,J: drives which exist on the external drive. After I connect the external drive, computer stops responding too, and only resumes when the external drive cable is disconnected.

In case of Sandisk memory stick and mp3 player, I do see drive letter (F:) but when clicking on it, it says drive cannot be found.

In case of USB hub...any devices connected to USB hub is not detected by the laptop, and only hangs up the laptop till I remove the USB hub.

It's been tiring too much of time being spent on trying to resolving these problems but have not been able to do it yet. I cannot use external drive, memory stick, usb hub and mp3 player on my machine :-(

I DO WANT TO POINT OUT that all these devices work fine by just plug-n-play on other computers. I tested on two Dell machines, and all abovementioned devices ran perfect. So, it is defnitely my machine.

I do not know what to do at this stage, and seek help from you guys. Please let me know if you have any ideas on how could I resolve this issues? Somewhere I found there is some problem with PCMCIA slot with Inspiron 2650. Somewhere I found it is the correct USB driver I need to install. I have gone to the extent of reinstalling Windows XP Pro but that did not help either.

Waiting and seeking your suggestions...Thanks a ton in advance!!!
Kumar

Welcome to WD Kumar,
It maybe that with so many devices, esp the ext hdd, not enough power is being supplied to them all. You should get an externally powered USB Hub and then attach SO many devices.

The External HD, would be drawing the most power I think.

Thanks TechZ for the prompt reply. Though I saw your reply after resolving the problem by myself, I must say your suggestion is on the right track. Problem was with the power of the inbuilt PCMCIA slot, not the USB hub/devices.

First, many many thanks to this website. It is amazing! In some thread, it talked about insufficient power supply from PCMCIA slot on Dell Inspiron 2650. It also probided the link for the patch.

http://support.dell.com/support/down...4700&devlib=27

I installed this patch and restarted the machine. All the devices are running perfectly now. I am amazed by the quality of the information at this website and sincerely thanks to the people here!!! I wish I could see this website earlier and did not have to put such a long time finding the resolution, but that's the way it goes. End result is very satisfying now :)

Thanks again guys...
Kumar

Well its good to see so much dedication for one problem Kumar, 3 months! Also, you explained it all very nicely in your first post, and u did spend time reading other thread too, so good going, keep coming back here!