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  • #1

    Computer forgot how to computer

    This was a weird bit, hopefully it won't happen again, but I am kind of curious about what the heck happened.

    Last night, my boyfriend tried to hook a friend's android tablet up to his computer to transfer some ebooks. The computer recognized the tablet and that's as far as we got because we went out to eat so he ejected the device from his computer, unplugged it and we went out. Came home and his computer was locked up. Rebooted it and it wasn't accepting input from any of the usb ports. So he called our friend the computer god, who had him try various different things (unplug all the usb stuff, hard reboot, look around in the system settings and the bios) and nothing worked (we have an old plug style corded mouse, and I was able to access the on screen keyboard so we were able to at least try stuff). So I shut the machine off for the night. This morning I turned it on because it occurred to me that maybe a system restore would fix the issue. Just for giggles I plugged the wireless dongle for his keyboard and mouse into his computer.... and it worked fine. Far as we can tell all of his usb ports are again working normally.

    Any guesses about what happened? Were we trolled by the computer (that's my current theory)?
    You're only delaying the inevitable, you run at your own expense. The repo man gets paid to chase you. ~Argabarga
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  • #2
    Sometimes USB devices/hubs can go weird, and need a full power cycle (power removed for 30 seconds or so, reboot isn't long enough)

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    • #3
      While this is not usually the case with newer systems, some comps will refuse to go very far into the bootup process if a keyboard is not connected. Also - and this may be a quirk of my mobo - If I move my keyboard to a different USB slot that has never had the keyboard connected there before, the system will treat the keyboard as a new USB device and go through the brief "discovered a new USB device" process. Maybe your unit likes things to stay in "their own slots" as well...?
      "For a musician, the SNES sound engine is like using Crayola Crayons. Nobuo Uematsu used Crayola Crayons to paint the Sistine Chapel." - Jeremy Jahns (re: "Dancing Mad")
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      • #4
        Boyfriend has a particular port on the top of his machine that he tends to use for temporary devices like his kindle, flash drives, and the like. The tablet had been hooked up to that one.

        When we discovered the computer was locked up, the first thing done was a simple reboot, without removing any of the hardware normally plugged into usb ports on his machine. It was AFTER that reboot (and changing batteries in the keyboard and mouse since they were apparently being unresponsive) that we discovered that it was the port being unresponsive, not the hardware.

        Had no trouble getting the machine to reboot, it doesn't care if it has a keyboard plugged in or not. I was able to get into the 'ease of access center' and pull up an on screen keyboard you work with the mouse. So boyfriend was able to get into the system settings to see if the computer even knew it HAD usb ports. According the hardware manager, though, everything was bright and shiny, all the ports lined up like they should be. Just no info about anything that was plugged into any of them. A flat refusal to admit that there even WAS anything plugged into any of them. Not even the detecting new device routine when we moved stuff around.

        So he poked and prodded at it with the guidance of our computer god friend for 20 or 30 minutes then gave it up as a bad job and went off to grumble for a while. I shut the machine off at that point since it was looking like the next step was going to be taking the machine to our local repair folks the next morning and see if they could figure it out.

        The next morning, I had the bright idea of trying a system restore first, if there was a restore point less than a year old, figuring that while it might not wind up being helpful it at least shouldn't cause any MORE problems. And found that the problems of the previous day had just ceased to be (if only all of our problems were dealt with so easily).
        You're only delaying the inevitable, you run at your own expense. The repo man gets paid to chase you. ~Argabarga

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        • #5
          That happened to me with sound once. It just stopped working for no reason I could find, and nothing I did fixed it. I rebooted into a Linux livecd and it worked fine. Rebooted back into Windows; nope. Rebooted again, "Oh hey, did you want sound? Here, I work now." ...really?
          Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, you speak with the Fraud department. -- CrazedClerkthe2nd
          OW! Rolled my eyes too hard, saw my brain. -- Seanette
          she seems to top me in crazy, and I'm enough crazy for my family. -- Cooper
          Yes, I am evil. What's your point? -- Jester

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          • #6
            Occasionally when I plug in my game pad I'll have to unplug/replug my keyboard/mouse for them to function again, on both Windows and OS X

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