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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : A rather tricky HP laptop problem....
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Grogster Admin Group  Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9305 |
This is interesting. BRAND NEW laptop - I set it up for the people, they just ordered it. It's only two months old, but now NONE of the USB ports work. There are two USB-A ports and a USB-C port - NONE of them work anymore. There IS power on the ports, but nothing you plug into them works. I have tried mice, keyboards, printers, flash-drives, external SSD's.....all sorts of things. Windoze flatly refuses to see ANYTHING on the USB ports anymore. To eliminate a weird Windoze driver issue or something, I then reached for a Puppy Linux and Linux Mint USB install drives, but the BIOS refuses to see them, and the machine flatly refuses to boot from them - it just falls back on booting Windoze. Interesting.... Next, I tried an SD card in the SD-card slot, but NO CARDS are detectable either! I suspect that the USB controller chip on the mainboard has FAILED.....which is not very encouraging on a brand new laptop that is only two months old. The shop she bought it from, WILL NOT make ANY attempt to rescue what is on it, and I was making the argument to the shop, that the customer SHOULD NOT have to pay to have a replacement laptop setup, two months after they just paid to have it setup if you see what I mean. However, we now have the issue that the laptop's USB controller seems to have failed, which is a hardware-level failure, and all the USB ports AND the SD card slot appear to be controlled by it, and so therefore......there are ZERO ways to actually backup what is on the bloody thing, cos none of the usual methods will work - such as a clone to a USB SSD etc, cos nothing USB or SD-CARD related, is detectable by the machine anymore. Any ideas? I personally think we're stuffed, and the customer is just gonna have to pay to have a replacement machine setup all over again.....only two months after having had it done, and what's to say the replacement won't do the same thing in another couple of months? HP model 15s-fq3074TU, if that helps at all. THIS one, is a bit tricky, cos NONE of the usual USB backup or clone methods will work, and neither will just copying the files to an SD-CARD, as that slot seems to be under the control of the USB controller also!  Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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Turbo46 Guru  Joined: 24/12/2017 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1611 |
The only option I can see is to open it up, remove the 'hard drive', plug it into a suitable case and back it up from there. As long as that is OK with the shop and doesn't void the warrantee. Bill Keep safe. Live long and prosper. |
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electricat Senior Member  Joined: 30/11/2020 Location: LithuaniaPosts: 161 |
Find service manual maybe this might be close enough and disassemble bloody thing  . Acess M.2 or SSD, transfer to some other system and copy files . https://elektrotanya.com/ is my first place to search for service manuals. Good luck. P.S. I would ask if clients used any external USB-C power bank or something (and fried poor thing. Not a rare case, clients pretend innocent ).By. the way. I would not ask shop can I do this or this. If you ask, they will say NO. Just in case. Nobody knows how experienced you are. Usually there is no any waranty labels to acess disks. ut I only speak for myself and will not be responsible for your decision ;) Edited 2024-10-11 15:54 by electricat |
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| zeitfest Guru Joined: 31/07/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 482 |
Does Device Manager list the usb controller, status etc ? Maybe try enabling / installing from there |
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| Malibu Senior Member Joined: 07/07/2018 Location: AustraliaPosts: 228 |
As far as a warranty claim, you might contact the Ombudsman, because it sounds to me like a dodgy 'honour' of warranty (or lack of  )Probably doesn't help with data retrieval, but at least they might get away with no cost. That sort of stuff annoys me  John |
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TassyJim Guru Joined: 07/08/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 6092 |
A warranty will only be hardware, data is the end users responsibility. Does networking function? If so, a NAS will work for data backups. You could try removing the USB controller in device manager and reboot. That should reinstall it if it exists still. Jim Edited 2024-10-11 16:18 by TassyJim VK7JH MMedit MMBasic Help |
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Martin H. Guru Joined: 04/06/2022 Location: GermanyPosts: 1113 |
If the Bios does not recognize USB, you do not need to look any further in the software. From a distance, I would guess that the controller chip is defective, although this should still be covered by the manufacturer's warranty. 'no comment |
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| Volhout Guru Joined: 05/03/2018 Location: NetherlandsPosts: 4219 |
Grogster, Just dump all the data to a backup in the cloud/NAS, provided WIFI still works in the thing. May take a while, but it should work. Power banks... yeah... Just heard a story... Colleague of mine has a Dacia Logan (brand - type) car. Few weeks ago, his remote control key would not lock the car, neither open the car. It simply stopped working. In the garage they checked everything (including replacing the key battery) and said the key would be broken. He spend (yeah expensive) near 200 euro for a new key, and (after pairing the new key) that new key also would not work. He left with the car, and at home he discovered when he stopped the enigine, that there where a few lights on his dashboard lighting dimly. After searching, they found one of his kids power banks connected to the USB charger sockets (it was near invisible because under the front seat). After disconnecting the power bank, all keys worked. Apparently the power bank had enough energy to power parts of the car for minutes that you use to get out of the car, and lock it. It would just leave somthing like 4-5V on the 12V accesory branch of the car. Volhout Edited 2024-10-11 16:51 by Volhout PicomiteVGA PETSCII ROBOTS |
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| matherp Guru Joined: 11/12/2012 Location: United KingdomPosts: 9087 |
Many of the cheaper laptops now have storage hard soldered to the motherboard. Also you don't want to void any warranty. Cloud backup is the safe way to go. |
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| electricat Senior Member Joined: 30/11/2020 Location: LithuaniaPosts: 161 |
they found one of his kids power banks connected to the USB charger sockets  yeah. Kids are creative. Lenovo laptops has square power jacks, so I`ve seen case where kids managed to put that power cable into USB I've seen smart multi voltage smart USB-C power banks. While interesting piece of tech, not sure I would trust power any low voltage devices from , say, 24V capable power bank . I would never trust client "device fail stories" 100% either :D |
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| electricat Senior Member Joined: 30/11/2020 Location: LithuaniaPosts: 161 |
True. It might be. So best of all it would be to look for service manual first to know whats inside |
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Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 6764 |
wi-fi or ethernet to do the backup. It might take ages and need some handholding, but it's probably the best way to go. I wouldn't expect the supplier to do backups in any case. They might pull out the main board, c/w with any storage, and stick a new one in. Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
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| EDNEDN Senior Member Joined: 18/02/2023 Location: United StatesPosts: 117 |
The first thing I would check is if the BIOS settings have been altered from default to turn off the USB devices. And hopefully the BIOS settings are not locked at what they currently are. In order to sell certain types of products into secure environments a vendor like HP must provide a way to turn off the USB ports and lock them in a disabled state. There are known holes in the USB negotiation protocol where a device can force feed the hardware bad code to execute. Besides this problem, in many secure environments (such as medical with patient data) the purchasing company does not want any quick and easy way to get data off of the machine. Please check if this device and model have that 'capability'. What you are fighting might be as simple as a BIOS setting that needs to be adjusted. Edited 2024-10-12 00:39 by EDNEDN |
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| circuit Senior Member Joined: 10/01/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 244 |
A family member recently left the employment of a major multi-national accounting company to take a better job elsewhere. Once he had given notice to leave his HP laptop had its USB ports remotely disabled; no foul play, it was a declared company policy and he was expecting it. This was simply to prevent company data being downloaded prior to the machine being returned to the company. Therefore, EDNEDN's explanation is quite likely. |
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bigmik Guru Joined: 20/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2914 |
Hi Grogster, Does the touch pad and camera still work? If so then it’s likely that the USB ports have been disabled and not damaged as these are almost always USB internally. I would first go into the BIOS and perform a reset to factory defaults. If that doesn’t work there is sometimes a reset all hardware option on HP laptops, I remember doing it on my work laptop (when I worked) after a forced update several devices refused to function and I had to hold a couple of keys (maybe Func F11, I can’t remember now) for 20seconds whilst in windows and the laptop powered down and restarted and these devices functioned again. Worth googling it. Also I did look at the service doc (googled the model number you mentioned in your OP) and the HDD does seem to be removable, although you have to remove the back cover and the screws are under rubber strips. So you could remove the drive and image on another PC with an external USB3 housing. It is possible someone put a USB kill stick (there are some around that that nefarious types like to ‘drop’ for unsuspecting people to find and kill their USB) into the PC. I don’t know if that is permanent or reversible. In any case Good luck EDIT *** have a look at this video on resetting HP models that have not removable batteries Video Clip After thinking I am fairly sure I had to press and hold Mute and F11 on my HP laptop. Mick (The big one) . Edited 2024-10-12 10:41 by bigmik Mick's uMite Stuff can be found >>> HERE (Kindly hosted by Dontronics) <<< |
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| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3797 |
But a factory reset will lose the data, I expect! John |
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| robert.rozee Guru Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 2350 |
could this amount to a 'kill code' being sent out remotely to the machine by either microsoft or hp? as you say, in the case of a corporate laptop this a legitimate action, but what if a 'kill code' is accidentally sent out to the wrong machine? could it simply be that in the current case someone got the serial number of a machine being legitimately locked down wrong? so instead of a corporate computer being remotely disabled, some other machine with a serial number just one digit different is hit? a bit like the well known case of the Buttle/Tuttle mixup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWbIxFKtTmE it would certainly make sense that such a 'kill code' would be sent out via microsoft's update network, as you would want the message - for obvious reasons - to be as difficult as possible to block. ideally you may even want said message received directly by code operating below the level of the operating system, where perhaps the UEFI (BIOS) is designed to be capable of getting periodic network access (using SSID and password gleaned from the operating system) to check for a 'kill code'. cheers, rob :-) Edited 2024-10-12 23:57 by robert.rozee |
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| EDNEDN Senior Member Joined: 18/02/2023 Location: United StatesPosts: 117 |
This isn't how it is done. It is implemented as a BIOS setting that can be turned on or off. And typically the EEPROM storage to hold these types of settings is taken off-line when the BIOS transfers control to the Operating System's boot loader. The other half of this is the BIOS will have the capability to enable an 'Administrator Password'. If this password is enabled, only the company's IT staff that knows the password can get in and change settings. When you look for used Laptop computers (especially Lenovo ThinkPad) on eBay, very often the item description will call out that the BIOS is unlocked. The reason is if the BIOS is locked, the new owner will not be able to change any of the settings. |
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stanleyella Guru Joined: 25/06/2022 Location: United KingdomPosts: 2109 |
as someone said take the drive out and usb to sata lead copy to another pc |
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| EDNEDN Senior Member Joined: 18/02/2023 Location: United StatesPosts: 117 |
Wouldn't it be easier (and cheaper) to just turn the USB ports back on if they are disabled by the BIOS? |
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