Hi Guys, got an Acer Aspire 5610Z laptop with Vista Home Premium installed in February.

I know Vista has a number of driver issues but mine is strange. I try to use a usb device that windows SHOULD have the driver for and it will not install. However, if i reinstall Vista from my recovery discs back to when i orignally bought it and re try the device it finds the driver and installs with no problems what so ever.

Then a few weeks / months later i try yet another usb device and have the same problem.

Its as though after a few weeks Vista just forgets about these drivers as it has had no need for them

I suspect that there's a device or program that "takes over" these settings on you. That'd account for the device being recognizable before and not now. Let us know what devices you connect and someone may have some tips for you.

I have only ever tried connecting three external devices to it and i got the problem with all three.

the first one was the SD Card Reader that is actually built in with the laptop. the first time i tried using it, it would not recognise the SD cards until i reinstalled vista,

then it happened when i bought a 2gb usb pen drive, not any particular make or model, so reinstalled windows and BOTH pen drive and card reader worked,

now i cant connect a standard usb mouse, and i know that if i reinstall windows then all 3 items will work together its jus a pain when i have to reinstall windows everytime i get a new toy lol

i want to try a clean install without using the acer recovery disks (so that i dont get all the stupid software that they give me hehe)
but the only other disk i got with the laptop is an acer windows anytime upgrade disk and im not sure if this will be sufficient, anyone know if this will work or if i need and actual windows vista install disk

Was the laptop originally equipped with Windows XP? If so, how did you install Vista - was it an Upgrade or a Custom installation? If it was an upgrade, did you check all of your drivers for compatibility after setting it up?

laptop came with vista already installed and normally when reinstalling i use the recovery discs that acer allow you to create when you first buy the machine.

i also had a disc for the windows anytime upgrade, i tried it out today and this disc allows you to install windows from scratch wothout any of the preinstalled programs that acer force upon you, so i done that and as i predicted everything works together how it should, no i sit back and wait until i get a new device that isnt recognised

I wonder if windows update is giving you this problem.

Have you looked at Device Manager to see if there's any issues there? (red x's or yellow !'s)

To get there, go to Start and type in "devmgmt.msc" (without the quotes) and press Enter

i've checked everything i can think of, there are no compatability issues and all drivers are installed fine and no errors

Since the USB ports work fine when you reinstall, I'd tend to think that it wasn't a hardware issue. So, that leaves software.

If the Windows Anytime Upgrade disk doesn't give you the problems, then I'd have to assume that it's the Acer utilities that are messing you up. You can verify this by borrowing a "new toy" and seeing if it works or not. If it does, then this will tend to confirm that it's the Acer software.