This is something I've never encountered before, so I thought I'd check in here to see if anyone knows what to do.
A couple of days ago, all the USB ports on the laptop stopped working. It didn't matter what was plugged in to them, they weren't getting any power. I've taken the following steps:
- Checked Device Manager - Windows says the drivers are fine, and the ports are getting power, but, even after a re-install of the USB drivers, no activity on the ports
- Checked the event log - No errors in System related to USB
- Checked BIOS settings to see if anything USB-related was misconfigured - everything checked out
- Run system diagnostics from within the OS - The ports come up as ok and getting power
- Changed Power settings to prevent USB ports from being put to sleep - No luck
- Run Dell diagnostics at bootup - The USB ports tests come back OK
- Did a restore to a restore point before everything went wrong - No luck; the ports still don't function
- Did a factory reset - No luck; the ports still don't work
What's odd is that, at reboot, a plugged in USB drive will turn on. Just for fun, I installed a Linux Live distro on my USB drive, and it boots up fine, so something in the OS is shutting off the USB ports.
I'm out of ideas. Does anyone know what could be causing this?
Thanks!
-Doug