USB ports not recognised by the Laptop

[Kathryn65]

Hello,

I had a case raised with HP support recently. Here is the background:

I bought a new laptop in November 2018. I moved the files from my old machine to the new one using an external hard drive - so the USB ports worked at that point. Everything worked fine initially. I first noticed something was wrong at the end of January when I went to perform my usual monthly back up using the same external hard drive that I used to move the files from the old lap top to the new one. It wouldn't work, when I clicked on the drive a message came up in a window saying access denied. I was confused and at first thought the external hard drive was corrupt. However I tried the external hard drive on my old lap top and it worked, I also tried it on other PCs and it worked, one of which is a HP Probook the same model as my new one. My mouse that also works via a bluetooth USB continued to work.

Earlier in May I contacted HP support, we were going away and I was getting concerned because I hadn't done a back up for so long.

First of all they were sure there was a virus on the laptop or the external hard drive so I did a complete scan or both and nothing was found. I do a weekly scan on a Sunday so I was pretty sure there wasn't anything lurking. The support team took remote access of my new laptop for 3 hours but couldn't work out was wrong. Eventually they said I needed to reinstall windows as they thought that had become corrupt.

As I was going on holiday early the following day I said I would have to leave it till I returned. The case I had open with them has therefore been closed, because I went on holiday not because the issue was resolved.

On Tuesday afternoon (28 May).I opened a dropbox account and moved my files to that. I reinstalled windows as per the instructions givent o me by the HP support team. Everything worked fine and moved the files back from dropbox to the laptop. I then copied everything to the external hard drive.

On Wednesday morning I set my email accounts back up. After doing that I checked the external hard rive still worked and it did.

I worked as normal on Wednesday and for most of Thursday.

Late on Thursday my mouse stopped working and at first I thought the battery needed changing, but that made no difference. I plugges the external hard drive in and saw the 'access denied' message that I'd been seeing prior to reinstallingw windows.

Does anyone on here have any advice as to what I can do next?

Many thanks

Kathryn 

Everything worked fine and the unit detected the USB so I was able to do a backup.

The unit worked fine on Wednesday and Thursday, with the exception that it wouldn’t recognise my fingerprint. I tried rescanning my fingerprint but the unit said ‘this fingerprint is already registered with this PC’.

Anyhow the unit worked fine during today until 20 minutes ago when the mouse stopped working (it’s a wifi mouse).

I knew it wasn’t the battery as I had changed that earlier in the week.

I tried plugging the external HDD into the unit and I got the access denied message that I was receiving before I reinstalled windows. I tried other USB drives and they all did the same.

What do you suggest I do next???

Kathryn

[TryToDoMybest · Accepted solution]

Hello

which Probook model do you have ?

Are you using HP Client Secuty manager and enabled  Device Access Manager ?

in order to remove Finger Print , the way I knw is to enter in BIOS Setuo (F10) and Select the Restore the security to default setting.

A way to check USB functionallity is insert a  Windows Installation USB port , then boot the PC , press F9 , from the boot devices list select the USB key. You don't have to install the OS. When you get the first windows and process stops wating for your prompt, at this point if you press SHIFT+ F10 keys, you get a CMD prompt windows. now you can remove the USB key, insert you hard disk and check if you can read it.

bye

[Kathryn65]

Hi

It's a Probook 470 G5

I am using HP Client Security and looked at the settings in Device Access Manager, the settings for the USB ports had defaulted to no access so I've set them to always allow and everything is working fine now.

Whilst in there I also figured out was going on with my fingerprint so that is working fine now too.

Thank you so much.

I am somewhat suprised that HP themselves when they had remote access to my laptop for 3 hours didn't figure out that it was their client secturity manager that was causing the problem.

Once again thank you very much. 

[TryToDoMybest]

Hello

it always depend on the experience of the support people you may find when you call.

I've decades of experience with computers , so I imagined you were using Device Access Manager .

Happy to have helped you.

bye