HELP! Intermittent iLok problem

[Tubthumper]

I’ve been having intermittent problems with my iLok + PTLE 6.4cs9.

(My PC: a previous-generation “Allenstein”: AMD Athlon 64 3400+, ASUS K8V SE Deluxe motherboard, etc.)

Here’s the deal: sometimes I can boot the PC with the iLok in it’s regular (rear-mounted) USB port – where it had been working just fine throughout the previous session mind you – and it doesn’t show in the “safely remove hardware” icon list, and will not function to authorise plugs within PTLE.

I then remove the iLok from the port, re-insert it, and it’s then one of three possible outcomes:
1. I get a “USB device not recognised” message from Windows. The iLok will not show in the “safely remove hardware” icon list and will not authorise plugs within PTLE.
2. The iLok will show in the “safely remove hardware” icon list but will not authorise plugs within PTLE.
3. Or it will work just fine.

I’ve tried other USB ports – same results.

Another thing I’ve noticed: if it does show in the “safely remove hardware” icon list and I click “stop” in order to safely remove it, sometimes the light on the iLok remains on, even though Windows shows a dialog box confirming that the hardware has been safely closed and can be removed from the system.

I’ve used other USB devices with this system and they generally work fine. I say generally because ONCE when I inserted a USB flash drive I got a “USB device not recognised” message. This occurred on one occasion immediately after I inserted the iLok and Windows failed to recognise it. Apart from this one occasion the flash drive works as expected.

In Device Manager: everything looks cool. Nothing of note in the USB section or anywhere else. In the BIOS I have USB2 activated and HIGH SPEED activated also.

Some background info: I had a motherboard fail on me last year. It was replaced under warranty. The techo who installed the replacement thought he was doing the right thing when he installed Windows XP Service Pack 2 on the machine: when I found this out I asked him to revert to Service Pack 1 as I was running an older version of PTLE v6.4 that did not support SP2. He did this (reverted to SP1, but did not re-install Windows from scratch) – since then I have run the SP2 upgrade CD supplied to me by Microsoft + upgraded to the SP2-compatible version of PTLE (6.4cs9) + installed the latest version of the iLok driver.

Sorry for the long post. Anyone have any ideas? I’m about to kick the [bleep] out of the PC……