USB problem: devices work at boot time but not once unplugged and plugged in again.

Hi All,

This is a strange one that I've spent MANY hours trying to debug and
diagnose. The quick summary of the problem is as follows:

- when a USB device is plugged in (e.g printer, camera, card
reader) before the computer is booted then it'll work fine.
- if the device is removed and re-plugged in it doesn't appear
connected. e.g. digital camera SW complains that it's not
connected. Also the tell tale hourglass mouse pointer that
you normally get when you plug something in doesn't happen!
- seems as if something is slightly broken and it isn't
re-mounting or re-checking the USB bus for new devices.

The other strange thing is that the wintop shows "msgsrv32.exe" is
using loads of CPU from boot time. From my reading around it sounds
like this has something to do with plug and play and I'm sure these
two oddities are related.

Some history
- USB always used to work fine. This is a new problem.
- I don't (to my knowledge) have any new devices/drivers
that could cause problems

Things I've tried
- I've run SFC - nothing out of the ordinary
- I've cleaned out viruses and spyware etc
- I've read numerous messages in these groups but haven't
seen the same problem

- usbview.exe shows the devices at boot, but as expected
doesn't show them when they are re-plugged in

System description (though shouldn't matter as this stuff USED to
work)
- win98se
- amd 900MHz
- gigabyte via chipset MB
- WD hard drive
- 384MB RAM

Any suggestions anyone can give would be greatly appreciated!!!

Though it maybe time for me to upgrade to a newer OS!

THanks,

Neil,

ok,

Think I've finally solved my problem. And the lesson learned? = always
run the latest virus checker!!!

Re-run full virus check and found a nasty trojan which had a
particularly cunning filename:

c:\windows\system\system.exe

Seems this caused me a number of odd behaviours I was seeing.

Good free virus checkers:

www.grisoft.com = avg

www.trendmicro.com = free virus scan.

Hope this info helps others that might have the same problem!