Computer does not recognize Nook Color

[dvm503]

This has been a persistent issue with the NC since day one.  What I have found is that which USB port on your computer is used is important.  My desktop XP machine has two USB ports on front.  If I use the one on the left everything works fine.  If I use the one on the right, the computer reports an "error connecting to remote media".  A similar situation occurs with my Windows-7 laptop.  I've talked with other NC owners at work and they have reported the same findings.  I'm going to try it with a powered USB hub and see what happens.

The USB cable, at the NC end, can be a bit fragile.  I have been lucky.  My dog knocked my NC off the night stand while it was charging.  The micro-USB connector that goes into the NC now comes out of the plastic base at a 45degree angle.  It still works!

I'll probably buy a "spare" cable, just in case.

Cheers

[ury2ok2000]

I recently had a problem (which may or may not be similar Im just throwing it out there for anyone who may stumble on this page) with a rooted and custom rom Nook Color where the drives would show up empty when I plugged the nook color into my computer. Turns out you have to enable usb storage on the nook color when this happens. For me using CM7 when you pug it into the computer there will be a usb icon that pops up in the notification area. Slide to open that area then click on the notification about USB. There should be an option you have to select to enable usb drive mode, and after that my drives were picked up by windows. This is with a rooted custom rom though.

just fyi - for anyone it may help.

[AltunA]

I had a smiliar problem with my nook color. The battery was fully charged when I experienced the connection problem. I let it open for a while till the battery gets down a little bit. Both win7 and xp did recognize when it was not 100%. Now I can get it connected. Hope it works for others, if it is not the cable issue.

[Boatbuilder]

I just had the same general problem. When I tried to plug in the NC, the computer it couldn't recognize the USB device and that the device was defective. I tried most everything I read about here including rebooting and creating a restore point, but no joy. I have side loaded a lot of books and never had this problem in the past so this morning, I took the NC back to the store where I bought it - Best Buy.

When I bought it, I also bought their "black tie" coverage. Don't usually do that, but this time I was really glad I did. The "geek" on duty tried connecting it to one of their computers with my cable and with one of the store's cables. No luck in either case. He speculated that the problem is that the connector on the NC has come loose because of the force needed to push in the micro USB connector. I had noticed that I often have to give it an extra push to get the charging light to come on.

Because of the black tie coverage, he offered to exchange it for a new one. Not really a good idea from my point of view because of all the side loaded content that I am going to have to reload, but no alternative.

But here's the good part. It occurred to me that the new tablet is selling for just $50 more than the old NC so I asked if I could just pay another $50 and get the tablet. The lady said that would be fine, but when she rang it up, she found out that I had paid $250 for the NC which is what they are charging for the tablet now. So she traded me the tablet straight across. No extra charge!

Dude - I got an upgrade!

Merry Christmas to me! (And to you too assuming you don't find seasonally affected enthusiasm offensive.)    

[katief]

   My husband and I both have a Nook Color which we purchased in Oct. 2010.  We did not have an issue with our PC recognizing the Nook as a device until we tried to load a couple of pdf documents last week..  We tried many of the fixes listed earlier on this blog and even thought it was an issue with Windows 7--I have a new computer with Windows 7 but my husband has had a Windows 7 machine for about a year and did not have a problem until we bought a couple of replacement cables from Barnes and Noble. (Both of our original cables came apart where the metal input comes out of the cable.) 

   I bought a new car charger last week at a Barnes and Noble store--to get a new cable because they did not have a separate cable in stock to buy.  The cable that came with that charger does not allow our PCs to recognize our devices.  We remembered that we had purchased a car charger in August of 2011 and we tried the cable that came with that charger.(It has a little tag hanging on it that says Nook--the one we bought last week does not.) The older cable allows our Nooks to be recognized on both of our Windows 7 computers.

   It is totally the cable that is the problem!  As a side note--the cables that will not allow our PCs to recognize our devices do not show as."charging" on the bottom right of our Nooks when plugged into a power source.. They do, however, charge our batteries.

[COBHC]

if you see the removable disks you will be able to open them and transfer the files

[Myxlptlk]

Thanks to a posting here, I tried the cable that came with my Android phone.  I have an HTC EVO, and, voila, it worked!  Now my computer recognizes my Nook Color..Thanks!

[bklvr896]

I use the cable that came with my original Nook, the N1E, for all 3 of my Nooks, N1E, NST and NookColor.  Never had an issue with the computer not recognizing any of them.  I don't think I've ever used the NookColor cable for connecting it to the computer.

[BlueJayOR]

I just went through this with my NC. My computer (Vista OS) did not recognize my NC. Occasionally it would briefly flash on as recognized, then go off. (It instantly recognizes my NST.) Thought about reloading ADE. But the NC not recognized as a device by the computer, so I tried a different NC usb cable. (From my NC car charger.) No go. I tried both usb ports on the front of my computer, two usb cables. Nothing. I then plugged a usb hub I had into a port on my computer, connected my NC to the hub, and my computer recognized my NC! The weird thing is, now I can connect my NC into either computer usb port, without using the hub interface, and my computer recognizes my NC every time, either port! Go figure, makes no sense to me, but worked.