Problems getting Kinect to connect (Linux, Windows)

[Ben Chang]

I've been using OpenNI and the Kinect for a while now, and have just run into a problem with a new computer.  I can't get the Kinect to register as a device either in Windows or in Linux.  The light doesn't flash on the Kinect, nothing shows up in dmesg in Linux, nothing happens at all in Windows.  The same device works fine in Linux on my other laptop, so I'm wondering if it's related to the hardware in this new machine. 

I've installed the unstable versions of OpenNI 1.5.4 and NITE 1.5.4, and avin2 SensorKinect 5.1.2.1 both from the binary installer package on github and by building and installing from source.  I'm trying this on Ubuntu 12.04 and on Windows 7.

On Ubuntu, for a while I was getting a "device not accepting address" error, with error code -71.  However, after my latest attempt re-installing SensorKinect, now nothing shows up in dmesg when I plug in the Kinect at all. 

I've tried all the ports on this machine, same result.  Other USB devices (mouse, USB storage) work fine. 

The MB is a Gigabyte Z68MA-D2H-B3. 

In the past I've always been able to get the Kinect to work, at most by just turning things off and on again, but I'm stumped this time.  Any suggestions for diagnostics I can try?  I hope I don't have to dismantle this thing and RMA the Mobo, it was a pretty tricky build cramming everything into this case ...