Thank you for yet another helpful tip.

It isn't under warranty anymore sadly. I've always noticed a 'Recovery' partition on my hard drive but never bothered to look at it. Just done so and it would appear them clever folk at Dell have a simple .exe file that should restore my laptop to factory settings for me :hmm:

Will back up my data soon and give that a go, if that doesn't work, I'll take a hammer to the bastard :}

Alright, now I'm confused!

As a last resort I tried plugging in my Belkin 'usb extension hub', and then my iPhone USB cable into that... and hey presto, it worked!

I'm still getting the annoying 'USB in/out' noise and the not recognized message but I'm able to access my phone, external hard drive, memory card reader etc through my USB hub :eek:

Presumably that Belkin is a powered hub?
That strongly indicates theres a voltage problem on the USB ports on the PC
It's carrying a data signal, but when something tries to draw power its crashing


PS - Dell recovery partitions are usually pretty reliable and bulletproof. Unlike some other PC companies (e.g Acer...)

Belkin USB 2.0 4 Port Travel Hub (Black)

That's the hub I have

"Bus-powered, no power supply included "

Now I'm confused

Reminscent of a problem I came across years ago on a batch of machines where a specific model of camera would only work if a specific brand of mouse was plugged in....
That was a power problem on an old USB chipset design, but should be a thing of the past now.

Has to be a power issue, but how to get around it I really don't know - unless simply knocking all the USB entries in device maanger out and rebooting fixes it.
Don't simply delete each entry - choose the "uninstal" option

Just a quick update which I'm posting in case anyone else happens to find this thread in the archives with a similar problem.

After following the excellent advise from Milo Minderbinder, which sadly didn't resolve the problem, I was at my wits end googling for hours. I found one thread which simply suggested that removing the power supply from your computer or laptop (or removing the battery from the laptop while its not plugged in) will 'reset' the mobo that maybe having power issues, as Milo Minderbinder suggested earlier.

I unplugged my laptop while it was turned on, then removed the battery and left it out for 5 minutes... hey presto, it's working! :ok:

thats just weird......definitely one to remember though