USB wifi dongle not being recognised (at all) by one machine, the others do.

[JenkinsJ]

Alright okay so I have this Netgear wifi dongle to wifi-up my desktops, which when plugged into every machine except the one I need it for works (and by that I mean windows does it's whole searching for drivers thing, and acknowledges that there's new hardware there). But when I plug it in to the computer I need it in, it doesn't even recognise anything has even been put in the USB port - if you go to the Device Manager it doesn't say there's some unknown device there it just says it's the USB port.

This would lead you to believe that the USB ports in that machine must be fucked, but they're not, they work just fine with everything else. So we have a USB dongle that works in everything but one machine inexplicably, and that one machine works fine with everything else. It's seems a bit hard to follow to me so I made a diagram (I'm not entirely sure how to embed media so I'll just link it until I come back and edit this):
[url]http://img34.imageshack.us/img34/2955/problemact.png[/url]

So if anyone could help I'd be very very very grateful, even if you think you wouldn't be helping, go ahead anyway, I'm smack bang out of ideas.

[VladimirPutin]

Install the netgear drivers...

[Prismatex]

Get drivers.
:downs:

[JenkinsJ]

The others didn't have the drivers installed. It would look for drivers for this unknown piece of hardware its's had put in it - the other one wouldn't that's the problem, it didn't even know something was put in it.

[Prismatex]

Download drivers from Netgear's site.

[editline]05:51AM[/editline]

[url]www.lmgtfy.com/?q=Netgear+WG111+drivers[/url]

[JenkinsJ]

I've done that, it doesn't work, it has it's little installer thing and it says 'okay now plug in your netgear dongle' (not in those words) and I do - and it's like I've plugged nothing in.

I'll put it another way, on a clean install of windows on two computers, if I put the wireless dongle in, on a normal one it will say 'oh you put a USB device here, we don't know what it is, search microsoft update for drivers?' and on the machine I'm having trouble with nothing happens, it's not a driver issue.

Or it is a driver issue and I'm stupid, in which case I apologise.

But how would that explain the fact that the working machine didn't have drivers for it but still knew something was there?

[Prismatex]

How odd.

[reeferdk]

If it isnt detected at all this might work:

Go into device manager and remove ALL USB root hubs and USB controllers. Then restart the system and let it redetect them, after that is completed insert the device.

Have you tried other USB ports too ?

[JenkinsJ]

I tried both of those, and it still hasn't worked. I'm starting to think this is a lost cause :/

[reeferdk]

What operating system are you using, and what servicepacks is installed ?

[ThePunisher1]

Power issue?

[reeferdk]

You might be right... Some USB ports deliver 6v and some only 5-5.5v... You should try it in every port in the system..

[ThePunisher1]

I say this because I tried running a portable hard drive, the computer recognised it in disk management but would not come up in explorer.
Unplugged a few things from my socket extender and then it popped up :)

[JenkinsJ]

I don't know what model the mobo is without booting it up and checking but it is [i]old[/i], not TOO old, I mean, you can boot from USB and stuff - but another computer I tested this dongle in was of a similar age so I don't know if that's of any significance?

As for the power issue, I'm thinking it could be that, but I've had it plugged in with no other USB devices plugged in and it still gets nothing, ThePunisher1 can you go into more detail about what you were on about? Also I though (probably wrongly) that if [i]any[/i] USB device drew power (like a flash drive or something) then it wouldn't be a power issue because they all draw 5v - is this right or not?

reeferdk, it's not an OS issue, because I booted into a linux live cd that also didn't pick it up (but picked up USB drives and a USB mouse). And I've put both Windows XP and Windows 7 on the machine with the same problem.

[ThePunisher1]

Are you plugging this directly into the motherboard?
Are there any other available USB ports not hard wired onto the motherboard?

[JenkinsJ]

Yes I am, and Yes there are and I tried them all :/