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HD failed > Replaced > Restored > Now USB ports won't work

teamgibbs

teamgibbs

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 14, 2008
56
30
Minnesota
Hello Mac gurus I've got a real confusing issue. My HD recently failed. I replaced it with a brand new one, same manufacturer. I restored the machine (iMac, Leopard) from Time Machine.

Now I have some strange issues. A small but irritating thing. The camera no longer works, well I'm not sure. The little green light is on (always actually) but no video feed from it. Ever since I brought it back to life the little light has been on.


The REAL ISSUE thats killing me is the usb ports do not see things plugged into them. UNLESS I restart the machine with the devices plugged in at the time. The ports also seem to be extremely slow. My time machine backups fail because they churn for hours and hours.


A third issue related to the USB issue, no matter what trickery I attempt my iPod Touch cannot be seen by my mac like it doesn't exist. I'm hoping if I resolve the USB issue my iPod Touch problem will resolve itself.

I'm totally at a lost here. Any advice would be welcome.

Gibbs
 
My 2 cents, is to do a clean reinstall, try out the ports and camera first before using time machine. If they work, then it may be related to time machine backup. If they don't, something in the hardware department may have failed as well.
 
I zapped the PRAM and the reset the SMC and no luck.

Still have USB ports not seeing devices and when they do see them they are incredibly slow. The data exchange rates are retarded. I can barely sync an iPod.

Any ideas where this problem originated. Remember my HD failed and I installed a new one, then used time machine to recover my stuff. When I think back the rebuild/recovery didn't seem to take longer than an hour or so. What might have happened during that process? When it last updated it saw one HD and found a new one during the recovery. Anything there?

So am I stuck reinstalling the OS?

Do IRC conflicts still happen?

Thanks again.
 
Wait, what? Which of you has USB ports not working?

Anyway, to rule out it being a hardware problem, plug an external harddrive or USB thumb drive into your computer and boot to your Leopard or Tiger disc. Open Disk Utility and see if it shows up.

Also, when you plug a thumb drive in, does the light on the drive light up?

If so, then it's a software problem, if it doesn't work when booted to your Mac OS X disc, then it might be worth a look back inside the laptop. Perhaps you didn't plug something back in right.
 
Sounds weird but it's most likely a drivers issue.

Chances are, some data is lost/corrupt/incorrect causing the USB ports not to work properly (I believe the iSight works off an internal USB bus). Not likely, but to make sure and possibly get lucky, I would create a new user to test out the ports. That would eliminate any possible errors from your User folder, however, the drivers are most likely in the System folders and any amount of Users wouldn't change that. It's just quick and easy to try out.


Other than that, your best bet is to do a fresh/clean install, chose NOT to transfer any previous data from the TM (if that's what you did before), and then go from there.
 
Can always check to see if it a user issue due to the restore, by creating a new user to see if it is an install problem or the user.

Might be a problematic/corrupt preference file if it is the user.

Since the light is on with the iSight, something whacky may be happening there overloading the bus.
 
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