USB Not recognized

[datainvest]

Sorry if this is simple for you but I am at my wits end. I have an NXT brick that works fine, downloads fine, but eventually my computer pops up USB device not recognized and then none of my USB ports work. The computer still works but after shut down I have to pull the battery to get it to reboot. Then the NXT will work again for a while (1-20) downloads and I have to repeat the process all over. I have tried many things today (all day). Nothing seems to fix this problem for good.
Uninstall/reinstall software and driver
Updated driver with patch
uninstalled all USB Ports through Device Manager
I could go on...Running Windows 7, NXT 2.0, Please help if you can.

Thanks,

Todd

[mightor]

Does this also happen with the brick being connected to another USB port or another computer altogether? If it does then you can be pretty sure it's the brick and not your computer. In which case, you ought to contact the LEGO helpdesk and they'll be happy to replace your dysfunctional brick with a better behaved one, I'm sure.

Regards,
Xander

[datainvest]

It does not matter which USB port I use on my laptop. Still get the same issue. I have an antique XP laptop and it did do it to that machine but the laptop can barely handle the capacity needs... I have a desktop PC (XP)and I cannot get it to act up on this machine. I have been on the phone with lego 4 times. You are all correct that they are great. They do not seem surprised by the problem but no success yet. Any other thoughts. I am very close to just getting a new brick. It works flawlessly except for this little quirk. I'm still not sure it's not a PC issue or a compatibility issue.

Thanks,

Todd

[HaWe]

not sure if you wrote that you already tried THIS:
did you re-install the Fantom driver?

[datainvest]

Reinstalled every driver I could find. Including the phantom.

This just in. I have decided to use a usb cable off of my laser printer. It has ferrite cores attached. Well, to this point I cannot get the problem to re-occur. If this is the answer to my issue I will be shocked. Not one person suggested trying a new USB cable. Is it possible that the ferrite cores are the difference? I am going to try another USB cord to trouble-shoot a little more. My thoughts at this point are #1 - a bad/poor quality USB cable and #2 Windows 7 over-reacting to a USB issue. I would appreciate any thoughts and will update if the problem returns.

Thanks to everyone,

Todd

[HaWe]

that's really odd.
But it reminds me of an issue of my own:
I was making domain server data backups to a USB drive and restored it on a 2nd PC, a rescue server clone.
Quite often the restore operation was broken by messages like "drive not found" or "data restore to drive D:\database\... corrupted because of unauthorized removing of drive ? (or whatever)" or "not enough disk space on drive __HJHTTZRFtr__" (something unreadable). I always thought it was a restore failure of the target drive (an old SCSI disc), but it turned out that it was the USB source drive, which could not be accessed, attached by another cable than before at the domain server (it was a bit thinner than the server-sided one). I replaced the USB cable at the rescue server and now every restore process works fine.
Does not seem to be rare, such a USB cable problem.

[afanofosc]

I have had problems on occasion where attaching USB devices to a non-powered cheap man-shaped hub on my laptop have caused that particular USB port to become non-functional until I reboot. I have generally believed that to be caused by an issue with current draw through the port or something like that. Something about your particular laptop's USB hardware is probably borderline.

John Hansen