Powerbook USB ports are not working

[CBal]

My Powerbook G4 15inch works well with my external hard drive, iPod, camera, etc. before, but yesterday, when I connected my iPod and external hd, my Powerbook is not recognizing it. My iPod and external HD are not mounting on my PowerBook, but the External HD lights up and the iPod says 'Do Not Disconnect'. So the problem should have to be the USB ports.

My PB is connected to a power cord because the battery recently does not work anymore as well, I just purchased it last August, with 13 cycles.

I tried resetting PMU and PRAM and it's still not working. I ran Apple Hardware Test and it didn't find anything wrong.

I really need help. I need my Powerbook and it's USB capabilities because I have important files in my external hd and I need my iPod as well. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[toolbox]

Are the USB items listed in System Profiler?

You could try a PRAM , NVRAM and PMU reset on the unit

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1431

 

[CBal]

Thank you for the reply toolbox! This is what I have on the System Profiler



I'm not really sure if it is showing

What should I do? Should I just completely erase and restore the OS? Or are there any more methods to fix this?

 

[toolbox]

Well it appears it's finding the USB controllers.

What you could do as a test, plug in the external drive, boot of your OS X DVD. Open up disk utility. See if it mounts the external drive. If it does its likely a problem with your install. There fore a Archive and install will correct this.

 

[CBal]

I did the reset for NVRAM because I missed this step. The USB ports still wasn't working. I just turned it off for an hour.

So I followed what you said: put the OS X DVD while the external drive is connected. I turned my PB on, inserted the disk, plugged the external HD. When I saw the desktop to reboot on the DVD, I suddenly saw my external drive mounted! I connected my iPod and it mounted also but iTunes was saying that 'the ipod was detected but it could not be identified properly'.
I fixed it by booting on my Leopard DVD, like you instructed, and checked on the Disk Utility if it mounts. The iPod did mount, so I clicked on repair and it definitely worked.

I even connected my phone (Sidekick 3) and it worked as well! My USB ports are working now! (And I thought I was going to erase everything on my PB!)

Thank you so much for all your help Toolbox!

 

[toolbox]

You're very welcome. Thank you for posting back and advising it's fixed.

Happy Computing!