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General discussion

USB Cords go bad?

by rjturbot Jun 19, 2005 10:22PM PDT

Hello Again--
You all helped me solve a problem with my cd rom last week. Maybe now you can help me with my Lexmark x125 all-in-one. The short question, is it possible for the USB cord to go bad?

I have had this Lexmark for 1-2 years, and it has always required me to restart the computer every day as it "freezes" up and won't print if it hasn't been used for a while. Of course I wouldn't save the doc I was trying to print, so I would lose that and then have to sit while I restarted and then start all over again. For a printer without an on/off button, this need to restart has always troubled me.

So over the last month the restarts have not been working. Recently, I just couldn't get the thing to work even though the printer status showed ready. So, I moved the cord to the front usb ports and it started working again. Today, I had to unplug the cord several times before it would work. So is it the cord?

I have Windows XP Home Edition 2002, have downloaded all the Win Service Packs, and it's all running on a Compaq with AMD XP1700 processor 1.47 G with 480M of RAM.

Discussion is locked

5 Posts
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USB Cords go bad?
by jcrobso Jun 20, 2005 7:46AM PDT

Yes, they can, their cheep so get a couple of spares. John

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Thanks!
by rjturbot Jun 21, 2005 11:08AM PDT

Well, that would seem to be the quick fix this case...and they are cheap to boot! Gotta love that. Will pick up a couple tomorrow.
Jackie

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Possibly not
by John46947 Jun 21, 2005 4:11PM PDT

Sure USB cables can go bad but seeing as you'd have to pull on it to break wires or a pet would have to chew on it I doubt that's your problem. You see if you had pulled it hard enough to break a wire you'd have unplugged it first. Since you didn't mention any pets I'm betting that's not your problem either. From my experience it's usually the female part of the connector rather than the cord. USB connectors were poorly designed and the male end tends to wallow out the female connector making for bad or intermittent connections.

If that doesn't solve the issue the next step is to look at the drivers. You said you've had to reinstall the software and that sends up red flags for me. Sometimes when you reinstall software there are bits left over from the previous install. Those bits can actually cause problems. Don't think that because you deleted the directory or used Microsoft's uninstaller that you got rid of it all because more often than not you haven't. There are usually sites on the net that will walk you through a thorough uninstall of particular software but you'll have to search them out.

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Then again
by John46947 Jun 21, 2005 4:17PM PDT

Speaking of drivers it might not bew a bad idea to check out your USB drivers under system devices. Somtimes you'll get multiple drivers listed in there that can cause troubles.

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Thanks new cord worked
by rjturbot Jun 25, 2005 5:37AM PDT

John, I appreciate the info you have provided also...but the new cord seems to have fixed the problem. I guess a new cord would have fixed the adaptor end you were talking about too!

As to the uninstalling being a problem, dealing with my cd rom issue taught me that this is much more of a problem than I ever imagined. I will check this out if the problem crops up again. Thanks everybody for their help!
Jackie

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