I have an Inspiron 700m running Windows XP Home SP2. A few weeks ago, I started having trouble with its USB ports. In a nutshell, the computer would not recognize devices that were plugged in to either of its USB ports. Sometimes it would not respond at all when something is plugged in; at other times, the computer said that the device was not recognized. I troubleshot the devices by using them with other computers.

Dell suggested I reinstall the USB drivers, which did not help at all. During the process of troubleshooting, they had me boot from a disc that came with the computer which has some diagnostic programs on it. That program did not detect any errors with the USB ports. Although they were reluctant to do so (due to the diagnostic revealing no problems), they finally agreed to send a technician to replace the motherboard. That immediately solved the problem. That was about two weeks ago.

However, today I once again began having problems. I keep getting a Windows error message saying that a USB device is not recognized, when I have nothing at all plugged in (something that never happened with the first motherboard). If I click on the error bubble, the dialog box that comes up shows my two ports, and says that one of the ports is empty and the other one has an unknown device attached. I also get the same error when I plug something in ("USB device not recognized"). I have tried plugging in multiple devices that work fine in other computers with the same result.

I just got through running the complete diagnostics from that Dell disc I mentioned earlier. The only error had to do with a timeout waiting for the audio controller to generate an interrupt.

When I first contacted Dell about this problem, they told me to reinstall my OS. I know how to do that, but it is a major pain. Therefore, I would very much like to solve the problem without resorting to that. Any help would be much appreciated.