USB Problems

Hi Folks,

My USB has recently been playing up, so that I can no longer use my 500MB memory stick or external hard drive, both of which are USB2. Without boring you with details of mother board, etc, my machine is about 3 years old with a genuine installation of XP home/SP2, and USB1 built in, and both of the above appliances worked perfectly until about a month ago. All other USB items I have (card readers, scanner, camera, printer) still work OK, presumably because they are USB1. Not all plugged in at once so don't think it is a bandwidth problem.

When I insert the memory stick it picks it up as a floppy disk, then changes its mind and says its a memory stick, then nothing, then floppy, etc. Most frustrating. Similar effect on the external hard drive. Both of these things work perfectly on other PCs in the house, of similar age with only USB1.

The only thing I have altered within this time was to install a second network card (for good reasons) and I seem to remember reading something about IRQ sharing (IRQ11 on my machine) with 2 NICs was not a good idea. I've had a go at changing the IRQ for these but this option is all greyed out. In any case can't see why it should affect things.

Any ideas?

SR