various computer/internet questions

If anyone can explain to me these, it's greatly appreciated...

***I have firefox mozilla the latest version with flash block. On occasion when I go to a website, I would just scroll my mouse and highlight something that I want to cut and paste to somewhere else. What always happens is a pop up screen comes with some advertisement. It pops down I think. I thought mozilla has pop up blocker? Is this something different? How do I stop it?

*** for some reason, all my usb ports have completely stopped working. whenever I plug something in, the only thing it can do is charge something. So I know I am getting some power into it. I run windows xp. My mp3 transfer plug, my skype phone all don't work. Is there any type of basic trouble shooting I should be looking at to try and fix it? I don't have a pirated version of xp.

 

I can think of couple options,
- one is that something has happened to your USB drivers. You should check control panel -> system -> ummm not sure which tab here because I dont have english version of XP myself.. But theres one tab and one button behind which you see all your devices and can check for yellow exclamation marks that tell if theres a problem with the drivers.

- second is that the USB ports are physically broken, it can happen especially if youre in the habit of pulling the plugs without disconnecting the devices from windows first. If this is the case you need a new motherboard or at least new usb ports depending on where they are located propably. It would be weird if they all broke at once though. So check the drivers first.

As for the other question.. Firefox can prevent popup windows, but the popups you see are something different.. Im pretty sure you can disable that active content as well from somewhere but not sure where. Flip side is that you wont propably see any text either on those pages then.

 

if your USB devices are charging but XP is not recognizing it then you may have to do some maintainance.

I've had lots of storage device issues which are usually solved by a little investigating. Admin tools > Computer Management > Disk Management and then look through the volume names when you plug in your USB device. madness happens when you run out of alphabet to assign to each device.

This may not be your issue at all, I just have had experience with some stupid issues where USB is concerned.

 

This happened to me before. Basically I just replug or reboot my computer.

 

I had some problems with USB ports as well. What tends to happen (even more often after a recent update from MS) in XP is that they get turned off very soon after starting Windows.

Go to Settings -> Control Panel -> System

(and here I'm not sure, I have a PL version)
go to Devices(?) -> Device Manager(?) and select each of the USB ports/controllers seperately, click the RMB and select Properties.
After that go to Energy management(the last window) and uncheck the "Allow turning off the device for energy saving(?)"

Uncheck that for all the USB ports.

Sorry, but when it comes to Windows, my English skills are a total failure

 

Thanks guys. I did all the things you guys mentioned. Still only charging or powering something but not recognizing anything at all.

I guess I'll wipe everything and do a reinstall or something.

 

Before reinstalling XP you might want to check some of the following:

USB not disabled in the bios, and make note of Bios rev and motherboard code for later.

You haven't run out of IRQ channels (due to having too many drives, graphics, printers, joysticks, scanners etc attached to the system)

You haven't recently installed another device that has conflicting software, had this issue between a USB TV tuner and a USB Negatives scanner. Had to remove software from both, and got asked for XP disk to restore some O/S files, and then reinstalled the TV tuner to get it working again.

You haven't recently installed an XP service pack which has replaced the low level motherboard drivers which provide USB functionality. If so you may need to download and manually install manufacturer motherboard drivers again for this service pack and/or if advised by the manufacturer flash the bios with new firmware for this service pack (WARNING: Avoid bios upgrades if possible, it could permanently destroy the motherboard if anything goes wrong and not for anyone unfamiliar with the process).

You've tried taking the PC off the internet and disabling all software firewalls/ virus scanners including windows defender in case they are interfering with USB

You've opened the device manager and set the view to including hidden devices, that way if they are listed as hidden, you may need to de-install in Safe mode on that hardware profile.

It could be a faulty hard drive or damaged sectors (checkdisk is a worth a full overnight scan)

If familiar with opening your PC, you might want to check that the block of pins that connect the USB sockets to the motherboard haven't come loose; power line could be fine, whereas one control line would disrupt all external USB bus communication.

With any luck it might be something caused by one of those

 

If you have a driver CD for your motherboard, you should try reinstalling that before wiping the whole windows.

If you checked your device manager, were there any problems listed?

 

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865

 

there were no problems listed when I checked the device manager.

Thanks for the link to the ad block. That seems to help a lot. I had flash block first. So now the pages load even faster. Thanks