Acer 5733Z-4851 - USB port on left side "not working"

[pbarnum2]

Recently I had a 4-port USB adaptor plugged into the aforementioned USB port. While moving the laptop to another location, I dropped it and suffered only a crack in the shell on the top left corner while the 4-port adaptor took the impact for the lower half. Since then that port has stopped working. The other 2 USB ports on the right side have never worked as far as I know. I tested a thumbdrive in all ports with no response (thumbdrive works with my PC) and just out of curiosity, plugged in my tablet which indicates it's getting a charge from the ports but neither the laptop nor tablet recognizes the connection between the two. Question 1 - can the USB port on the left side be swapped out? Question 2 - Is there a driver that needs to be updated for the USB ports on the right side to get them to work? I've seen a few posts elsewhere suggesting this particular model has a driver issue with those ports.

 

[popatim]

Try removing the battery for 20 minutes while the charger is not plugged in. It may reset the USB 5v power line breaker (if your laptop even uses them).
otherwise you may have blown a fuse and will need repair or motherboard replacement.

 

[pbarnum2]

That suggestion actually worked for the right side USB port but only the first one, not the second. I plugged in a thumb drive and it prompted me as to what to do with it. Tried the same thumb drive in the other ports and no bueno. I then tried a wifi dongle for a wireless mouse and got no results. Just a litte history, the original hard drive for this laptop failed. I ordered recovery discs from Acer and replaced the drive. It's still Windows 7. Thanks for the help popatim.

 

[popatim]

If those ports that don't work actually provide power (like a mouse optical sensor would light up) but not actually work, See if there are drivers for a secondary USB controller available for your laptop, like AsMedia. You may just need to delete that from device manager and the install the drivers again. I t would be odd to not put a breaker on all the USB ports power lines.

 

[pbarnum2]

I will try that next. In the meanwhile, all ports provide power. The left side port is actually mounted on the motherboard so I'll assume the worst case scenario for that one. The right side ports are on a separate board with a ribbon connector to the motherboard. Probably not telling anything new with that but out of curiosity I've looked at replacing the motherboard. Price range from $70 to $350 for the replacement and I'm capable of doing it myself but only on the cheap end. I'd rather get something new or refurbished than go on the high end.

 

[popatim]

If the usb ports are putting out power then I would definitely look into at least reinstalling the usb drivers before giving up.
Looks like they are part of the Intel Chipset so just that driver is all you need.

If you are still running win7 the use the Intel INF update utility for the HM55 chipset I believe you have.