I've been volunteering at the Kramden Institute (http://www.kramden.org) refurbishing old computers and yesterday I ran into a problem that I can't figure out. I've googled for answers, but I'm not even sure how to google for this one.

Basically I installed Windows 2000 pro on an old Gateway Performance 1300, P4 1.3GHz, 256MB RDRAM, etc... and when I checked the Device Manager everything was fine except there's an unknown USB Device under the "Universal Serial Bus controllers" section and it has an (!) next to it. There's also the "remove hardware" arrow in the bottom right tray that allows me to click to remove the USB device, it even says that it's safe to remove the device, but there's no device to remove so I can't make the arrow disappear.

I can't seem to resolve this issue. I let Windows try to find a driver for it but of course that didn't work, I tried to uninstall it but on reboot it's detected again, I inspected the computer inside and out and there is no indication of a USB device anywhere. It has USB headers that connects to the front panel via cable with two external USB ports. The bottom port works but the top port doesn't recognize anything (as if it's completely dead). The two back ports also work.

I've never come across something like this before. There are no other symptoms that I know of. Can someone please throw me a bone here? Thanks.

11/9/2007 8:10:12 AM

Grrr... any ideas at all? I'll probably go back to work on the computer tomorrow and I have no ideas yet. Any bit of help will be appreciated. Thanks.

11/9/2007 8:55:50 PM

my guess is you don't have all of the USB drivers or the correct usb driver. You might want to check online and see if you can find windows 2k drivers for that computer.

11/9/2007 9:24:49 PM

^ Thanks for the tip. I downloaded the latest Intel Inf drive from Gateway's site and that installed fine but didn't fix this problem. I can't find any better USB drivers for this computer. I think the drivers are fine because all other USB ports work fine. Anyway, don't worry about it, I appreciate your help.

11/19/2007 12:12:00 PM

Quote :

"I installed Windows 2000 pro on an old Gateway Performance 1300, P4 1.3GHz"

Why did you do that? NO XP licenses?

11/19/2007 12:55:04 PM

could you uninstall/remove the usb ports?

11/19/2007 1:11:55 PM