Weird Port Problems on Lappie

[pootas]

Got a Dell D600 Lappie running XP SP3

Lappie has parallel, serial and network ports...Anyways if I plug something into these it wont work...But if I go into device manager and disable and re-enable the port works???

Any ideas what this could be?

 

[karym6]

did it do this prior to SP3?

 

[pootas]

Yep...Does it randomnly sometimes just work othertimes needs a disable/enable

 

[karym6]

dodgy controller maybe?

Does it have the right/latest drivers installed for the model? (longshot)

 

[pootas]

Yep all have the latest and correct drivers...I'm guessing it's the mobo on way out...

 

[karym6]

quite likely unfortunately

 

[pootas]

Ahh well........It has served it's purpose...

 

[CAROLANN]

Got a Dell D600 Lappie running XP SP3

Lappie has parallel, serial and network ports...Anyways if I plug something into these it wont work...But if I go into device manager and disable and re-enable the port works???

Any ideas what this could be?

hello mate, i used to know someone that had port problems too, anytime they wanted to use say the serial port, they would have to uninstall the port fully in device manager and then simply restart the pc, then the port worked fine, but as i says, anytime after that he would have the problem again and again and have to uninstall in device manager and reboot and it would work again for that session, strange but true, lol.

 

[nozzer]

Laptops are notorious for using out-of-spec circuit arrangements in order to save a few pennies. RS232 on laptops is often left as 0-5v (or even 0-3.3v) instead of +12/-12v and parallel often comes directly from a gate array type chip that has little or no drive capability rather than via a buffer chip.

 

[pootas]

Hmmm Well it bluescreened this morning....I may just try and reinstall of windows to see if it a software issue...