After installing the chipset driver on a Dell Optiplex 380, the USB ports stop working. This was supposed to be a response to an earlier thread that was not properly answered, but Computing.net made me start a new thread.
The problem is Dell’s chipset driver installation package. Normally, you would install the chipset driver first after the OS install, but with the 380 that stops the USB ports from working at all upon your first reboot. Here’s what i did:
Instead of clicking “install”, i clicked “extract” when running the driver installation packages from Dell. Then, i manually installed each of the drivers through the device manager in this order: video, NIC, audio, then the chipset. Rebooted to make sure since a manual install of the chipset driver won’t prompt you for a reboot, and so far all is well.
As an extra precaution in case even the manual install of the chipset drivers failed, i created a system restore point just before attempting the chipset driver. This way, if the USB ports die again, i can boot to a Winternals ERD Commander disk and perform the system restore from there. Then, as a last resort, i would download the 5 Series/3400 Series drivers manually from Intel’s website and try again.
There are still plenty of these machines floating around, so i hope this helps someone.
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