Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Comm Port 4 is giving me fits, what is it?

This may be a coincidence, but yesterday, comm port 4 had an error. Says it isn't configured correctly.

At the same time, both of my HP external drives stopped working. I can plug them into my laptop and they both work fine. One is a 500 gig pocket media drive and other is a 500 gig HP personal media drive.

Suggestions??

The plot thickens... I have two printers that connect via USB. If I disconnect them, both drives work. I can then plug the printers back into the USB ports and everything works, for a while, then the drives start acting up again.

How ofter do you plug/unplug these USB devices? Is it possible that a jack/plug/wire got damaged? I've seen damage to USB interfaces cause very strange problems. It could even be the USB interface on a device has gone (perhaps a cap or some other component of the circuit has failed, which can happen with time).

If it isn't that, then it is a driver issue, and those are impossible to troubleshoot.

Are you using a USB hub or do you plug all the devices directly into the computer?

I plug all my USB devices into my computer. It seams to be more related to one printer. If I unplug it, the drives work. Oh, and the pocket media drive has its own connection in the drive bay. No cables for that one. The printer causing these issues is an older HP all-in-one machine. Its software will not load on Vista, so I just use it for a fax and copier. I'd get rid of it, but I just spent $80 on ink cartridges on the damn thing.

This is what I hate about computers. The damn things should be smart enough to just tell you what's wrong.

It is. It's telling you Com4 has an error.

<runs away quickly>

You better run smartass!

Does it have to be connected to the computer to function as a fax/copier? Especially without the drivers loaded, I'd think not. Give it a shot.

No, it doesn't. I did disconnect it and my drives are working fine. I just don't like knowing something is screwed up. Things never get better on their own and I'm just waiting to see what else goes tits up.

Damn thing.... Problem resumed this morning,even with the offending printer disconnected.

Could this be a hardware problem? Maybe the motherboard? It appears to be USB related and that comm path all looks integrated the board.