I have a beat-up old laptop that chugs along. Its newest problem is that the three USB ports (two on the right side, one on the left) don’t work. I’ll plug my mouse into all three, but none of them will “accept” the mouse; at least, not consistently. Seems to work about 50 percent of the time; when it’s not working, sometimes wiggling it will help, sometimes not.
How can this be fixed? Some options I’m considering: 1) Buying a replacement USB port and installing it in my laptop. Is this a thing that can be done by a layman? If so, what, specifically, do I need to buy? 2) Buying an adapter that is female on one end with a USB port (plug my USB into the female end), male on the other with an HDMI extension (plug into the HDMI port). Does such a device exist? And if so, what search terms do I need to use on Amazon? Further, if my USB ports are shorted-out, does that mean that the HDMI port is also likely to be wonky?
If it’s intermittent, and wiggling sometimes helps, that tends to point to a physical problem - most likely a dry or damaged solder joint or wear in the sockets themselves.
A competent laptop repair technician ought to be able to repair this - it may be as simple as reflowing the solder on the joints that attach the USB socket connectors to their board, or replacing the sockets with standard components (or perhaps replacing a USB daughter board component) - if this is the problem.
It’s actually not beyond the scope of amateur repair, but the scary part is that you often have to significantly disassemble the laptop to get at the bits you want to work on - which may be tricky and fiddly, and may involve some very careful handling of small or delicate parts such as ribbon connectors.
What’s the make and model of the laptop - let’s search that and see what it’s like to take apart…
When you say “beat up old laptop” what is the economic value? Look at eBay Sold comparable units. If very little then it would be cheaper to replace with another used unit than hire a technician.
The obvious possibility is that you have a bad mouse. Have you tested this mouse on another computer or tried another mouse on this laptop?
Unless you’re into doing it yourself, which is generally a waste of time unless you really know what you’re doing, the service labor + parts cost to get into and fix the USB port or replace the MB would probably pay for half or more of the cost of a brand new cheap notebook.
I used to be all about digging into these projects but the poor won/loss ratio over time vs the time invested just makes me toss them now or sell them for parts on ebay these days.
And if the problem truly is with the USB ports, what else is available on the computer? I have older notebook computers in the office I keep around because they have a nine-pin serial port. Or does this system still have a PC Card slot? Can you get a PCMCIA-to-USB adapter? (Although even if you could, the cost of the adapter would probably exceed the value of the computer.)
To answer two questions posted above, yes, I’ve tried the mouse on another computer (works fine), and I’ve plugged other USB devices - viz, my iPhone charger cord - into my laptop (they don’t work without wiggling, either).
I can get a cheap notebook for ~$200, but would I be able to play World of Warcraft on it?
I’m having to go from memory but I think the two devices I investigated were slightly better than that - basic Powerpoint animations and the like, even small videos and animated gifs. But full-screen SD - let alone HD - video streaming was definitely not on.
For a while, they were making laptops with the USB port plug directly soldered to the motherboard. (They might still be doing this on some laptops; it’s cheaper to build.) But people constantly plug & unplug things from those USB ports, and the stress from that tends to flex the motherboard, and that can make the solder joints intermittent (so wiggling them may make them work) but eventually they break completely.
But repair of them was difficult/expensive – often needed special equipment/skill to solder these without overheating & damaging other components on the motherboard. Typical price used to be around $100, with no guarantee that it would work – often that meant replacing the whole laptop was worth considering.
Just as an aside (as this isn’t what the OP needs)
USB docking stations with DVI/HDMI outputs, as well as single-port USB-to-HDMI adaptors (essentially a small external graphics card) are getting pretty good now. Certainly adequate for any kind of desktop work, and capable of handling fullscreen streamed video (as long as connected to a USB2 port or better). I’m using one right now - I watched a YouTube video fullscreen in HD and there was no perceptible problem.
Almost certainly not suitable for gamers, or anything else where the rendering of high quality realtime graphics is typically handed off completely to the GPU, but more than fine for ordinary computing. Their biggest drawbacks are that they don’t ever seem to live very long before dying, and they are quite susceptible to getting messed up when Windows updates itself.
I was going to drag out my usual Device Manager panacea advice, but the OP says that wiggling the connector sometimes makes it work - this still could be a non-hardware issues (the wiggling could be causing repeated reconnections, which the software might be intermittently ignoring for some reason), but it seems less likely.
Not sure if your problem has been fixed but if not you can try the following:
Go to Device manager and uninstall all device drivers
Select hardware detect and let windows reinstall all devices.
I the above did not solve the USB issue then do the following
Download Driver Booster from IOBIT and let it do a scan of all the devices on your Laptop & allow it to upgrade all the OUTDATED devices on your Laptop which will include the USB devices.
If this does not help you have physical hardware problem. Its not possible that all your USB ports can be physically faulty unless you had a device that you connected to the USB ports and moved it to all the USB ports because it would not work on the first port, and then tried on all other USB ports, so now you have damaged all the other USB ports.
hey, HeyHomie … you never answered mangetout’s question. also, you neglected to state how often you unplug the usb connectors in the first place. imho … they should not be disconnected … unless the laptop is being transported on a plane or similar.