Android/S3 USB connectivity issues

I'm not sure if this should go in the Android catch-all or not, but has anyone else had their USB drivers just stop working one day? I'm running XP, and I tried to plug my S3 in to the computer today and now it won't recognize it.

I went to the samsung site and downloaded their set of drivers, which didn't work... and after about a half hour of googling I came up with a link which sent me to 'Microsoft User Mode Driver Framework Install' (version 1.0). I tried installing that which was supposed to fix the error that it kept giving me (which was, the required file was not found in the INF).

Still no luck.
I just did a clean install of windows XP sp3, and I never had any issues on my old install.
Help?

Has it ever worked, on this fresh XP install?

No, sadly. And I really don't know why. I used windows update like always and got everything back up to snuff as far as I could tell.

Ok, then what I'd suggest would be plugging in the device, going into Device Manager (more info on that if you don't know what I'm talking about), and looking for a yellow exclamation point on a USB device; if you see that, it won't have loaded the driver correctly. Try deleting the device (highlight its entry and hit Delete), and then unplugging and replugging, and see if it correctly finds the driver.

If that doesn't work, try the nuclear-strength option: USBDeview. (edit: that link now goes to the download part of the page; download the very first thing you see, the centered link.)

Run it, plug in your device, and sort the list by connection status by clicking on the title of that column; it will list all the currectly connected devices at the bottom. Unplug and replug a couple of times so that you can see the line or lines that are changing. Once you're sure of all the lines that are changing from No to Yes and back to No, unplug the device, highlight those lines (my Galaxy Nexus shows four devices), and click on the trashcan icon, to remove the associated driver(s). I believe you can control-click on several devices so that you only have to click the trashcan once.

Then, close USBDeview, and try plugging the device in again. It will probably work. If not, let us know.

I followed your directions to a 'T'. But when I first opened my device manager I didn't see any '?', but skipped along to the rest. I deleted the 4 MTP devices/drivers that USBDeview found but I'm still at square 1. Here's the error it keeps giving me:
IMAGE(http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5327/9633362108_544b3960f4_o.jpg)
IMAGE(http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7299/9630139465_7d886f5289_o.jpg)
IMAGE(http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3824/9630144463_a1bb683e1f_o.jpg)

And then of course it gives me the ol "Your device has not been installed properly."

I also tried several other things like... only using the cord it came with and trying different ports. Which were two other common problems people said they had.

Maybe I should also mention it keep trying to say its a mobile modem?

edit: screenshots to help, maybe?

Ah, that's much more detailed... good job on the screenshots, that's very helpful.

I think Lou might already have nailed it. From his link, it looks like you need the User Mode Driver Framework for XP from Microsoft.

If things don't start working after installing that and rebooting, fire up USBDeview again, disconnect the S3, and delete all three of the drivers for devices with Vendor ID 04E8 -- that's Samsung. Then try plugging it in again.

If that STILL doesn't fix it, we can dig more through that thread.

Yeah, that's the site I found too, that linked me to that thing(in the OP - I tried that before posting here). When I try to re-install it it tells me that the equivalent or the same is already installed. So I took off the samsung s3 drivers that I had installed from their website, and I would have tried to take off the other framework one but its not listed in the programs list. I'll reboot, plug it in again and see what happens without the samsung drivers installed and just the MS framework ones.

Edit:
Yeah, it did what I figured it would do. Without the samsung drivers saying its a phone or a portable hard drive of some sort it installs fine as a camera. I have no idea on that one. It shows up as "Samsung_android_SPH-L710" (which is the model number) and "description" as "digital still camera"
IMAGE(http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7427/9631072907_9a509f74d6_o.jpg)
IMAGE(http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5527/9631079229_3f1a2f8796_o.jpg)
For all purposes if its helpful, drives E,F & G are my old installation on my secondary drive and it is entirely possible to boot into that fully working copy of windows if I had to.

And while it does come up with drive thing as you can see, when clicked into nothing will show up on that "drive" as a camera.

Edit2: After rebooting and re-installing the samsung drivers it detects the phone but still fails the driver installation giving the same error i pictured above.

For what its worth here's the exact "found new hardware" sequence it gives me each time.
1) samsung android SPH L710
2) samsung mobile USB composite device
3) mtp
4) samsung mtp
5) mtp
6) samsung mobile mtp device
(error window, NTF)
(click finish)
7) cdc abstract control model (ACM)
8) samsung mobile usb modem
9) A problem occured.....

edit3: Ironically enough when my phone was plugged in I headed over to Windows update and saw that there was a driver update avaliable for Samsung MTP - But I can't get it to install.
IMAGE(http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5505/9634420140_e7749d0948_o.jpg)

Well, when I was putting drivers on my system to talk to my Galaxy Nexus, I ended up needing to install the drivers manually through Device Manager.

What I had to do was to right click on the nonfunctioning device in Device Manager, choose to update the driver, choose to search locally, and choose to "pick from a list", as opposed to searching the filesystem. Then I had to clear the 'show compatible devices' checkbox so that all possible drivers showed, dig through the list, find a special category for Samsung devices, and then use the drivers there. (I think it was called "Samsung MTP device", and there were a couple of them... I might have had to try both, not sure.)

In other words, the automatic install didn't work. I had to manually force the correct drivers into place, even though they were correctly installed on the hard drive. (And I think I had to do this for a total of three subdevices, but it hasn't stuck properly in my aging memory.) That straightened me out, and your problem is looking kind of like mine -- you've covered the basics, so now more advanced surgery appears to be in order.

I didn't really think this would apply to you, because I was setting up my system for advanced functionality, the ability to unlock the phone and put new ROMs on it. But your symptoms look very similar to mine, so maybe the fix that worked for me will work for you, too.

When I get home from work I will post a screenshot of my device manager so you can walk me thru this a bit better. Because as I recall it wasnt even showing up there plugged in.

It should be there somewhere. Normally, Windows will expand categories with ! marks. If it doesn't have an ! mark, hmm, I dunno. You could still try force-updating the driver, but figuring out which device in that huge list needs to be updated could take some time.

This used to work okay on your prior XP install? How do you know that it's not working now? Do you get the 'blaat' sound of a failed USB device, or are you just not getting a drive letter you're expecting?

I double checked my other install and it connected fine. It gave me the 'What would you like to do with this?' option like usual, and when you explore it, it comes up as 'card' and 'phone'.

I'm not getting the error sound at all. I'm just not getting a working/windows regonizes what this device is connection.

And I know its not the phone or the cord- since it worked fine on the other install. I just don't get how it failed, or got corrupted or whatever on this one. And yeah, I checked down the USB lists and nothing is listed as ! or ?. The only things that give me those are the ones pictured above (which is the scanner and the SM bus controller (whatever that is?) )

Hmm, well, if the device isn't showing up in the device list, I'm not sure what to do. Are you sure you got the right drivers from the Samsung site?

You could try uninstalling those, and then see if the Windows Update drivers will install.

Is there a good super uninstaller out there that can grab all the files things leave behind to help with that? I wonder if the ten times I've done the install/un install that its left bad bits behind as well.

So I know this is a practically dead thread but, I decided to try a few other things. I did a repair install of XP and updated all the way up to the most current of ... well everything.

This did net me some better prospects. When I connect my S3 to the computer I now get it recognized as a MTP device with 1 option. Open in Winamp (see screenshot).
IMAGE(http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5538/10433117213_85dbc03f65_o.jpg)

From here I've tried several things out. (After being smart enough to make a system restore point)
I followed the secondary steps/instructions on this site link: http://tinyurl.com/l5u26oc
From divadrummer
If the player is showing up in your Windows' Device Manager under "portable devices" with a yellow "!":

1.) Right-click the yellow "!" and choose "update driver".
2.) When given the option to connect to Windows Update, choose "no, not this time" and click next.
3.) Choose "Install from a specific location (advanced)" and click next.
4.) Choose "Don't search. I will choose the driver to install" and click next.
5.) Click the "Have Disk" button. Browse to C:\Windows\inf and choose the file marked "wpdmtp.inf"
end other post

While this seemed to work fine, it really didn't do anything- Probably because the device in device manager wasn't really marked with a "!".

I also re-tried installing the Windows UMDF driver (also found on the above link) But of course that failed because its still installed (Somehow- I would have figured that would have gotten over-written when I did the Repair Install.)

Any other thoughts or suggestions are appreciated. I know I could easily go buy a mini SD-card reader and get around this problem... its just so frustrating that unless I really have to do that I'd rather (keep trying to) fix it.

Thanks!