woofer

The problem is NOT in your operating system ! (that is why reinstalls of the O/S, or changing this or that in the registry, unistalling things in device manager or redetecting them, etc, have not consistently worked). THE PROBLEM causing repeated "usb device not recognized errors" ORIGINATES WITH YOUR MOTHERBOARD !, specifically the USB chipsets or I/O controller there. I know because I had this problem a couple years ago and tried everything (like the kinds of things in this forum) to no avail. Finally, completely by chance I was on the phone to an Intel support rep about some other question or problem (I have an Intel DG965WH motherboard), when near the end I mentioned something about this - he told me do to something, and that cleared up the USB problem completely ! Unfortunately I do not remember what that something was (it may have been changing some setting in the bios (maybe disabling something there) - I don't think it was reinstalling chipset drivers or flashing the bios). Now, 2 years later, plugging in my HP printer (which has worked fine many times), the problem reappeared, which brought me to google things and to this forum. (note I did find a post I saved from 2 years ago where along with some instructions similar to what I've seen on this board, someone said "there is a problem with intel usb chipsets going flaky", which supports what I am saying - this does not mean the problem is unique to intel though). So that is the very valuable info I am giving everyone here -it's not a software problem in your O/S, but a motherboard problem ! Like I said, unfortunately I do not remember specifically what was done before, so I am the same boat as everyone else. But hopefully this can encourage people to look to the motherboard instead of the operating system, and post some of their experiences and possible solutions.