I looked under device manager-yes, sure enough, the USB 3.0 driver has that yellow triangle exclamation point thingie beside it, just as it did before. Then, after about 10 minutes, I heard the dreaded 'dum, dum' sound (going from high to low) that denotes a USB device being disconnected. It did initially, I plugged in the 64G USB flash drive I had and it was reading it just great.
Last night I updated it to Windows 10 Home thinking maybe that would solve the problem. This model, which I got a year ago for cheap off Craigslist, came to me with Windows 8.1. (It also requires me to use the slow touchpad instead of a USB mouse, because that one USB 2 port is the only one, and I don't yet have a USB powered hub, although I'm apt to get one soon.) This model works great for me, it's sufficiently up to date in terms of specifications etc, except for one thing-offloading those photos and videos takes awhile over a USB 2 connection, which is how it's going because the 2 USB 3.0 ports just don't want to consistently work. I have a Dell N7110 laptop which I will be using in about 6 weeks on a vacation for offloading photos & videos to a USB 3.0 flash drive.
