Limited USB Functionality Problem

[Nessism]

Asrock X58 Extreme motherboard system w/Win 7 64 has been intermittently loosing USB functionality on things like thumb drives, camera, and USB printer for some time. The mouse and keyboard always work though. More recently, the problem has become more persistent and rebooting doesn't clear it up. When the issue occurs window's knows there is a USB device there, only it doesn't function.

Windows says there is a problem with the USB hub, but reinstalling the driver does no good (system says the proper driver is already installed).

Since the problem has been intermittent until recently, wouldn't that suggest a hardware based failure? Have a spare hard drive so maybe a fresh OS install to test if the hardware is properly functioning? What do you guys think?

[Smoove910]

Maybe the repetitive inserting/removing of a usb device in the port has caused it to fail? Are the failing ports on the case, or on the back of the motherboard?

Maybe something like one of these connected to a known good usb port would help:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...&Tpk=usb%20hub

[Nessism]

Problem effects all the USB ports. Front and back the same. Not sure what device controls USB on the motherboard. Main chipset or some auxiliary chip on the board?

[Smoove910]

Is your mouse/keyboard USB? If so, I wouldn't think the chipset controlling USB would be defective or else anything USB related would cease to work.

[Nessism]

Mouse and keyboard work. When plugging in a thumb drive or camera Window's detects that a device was installed, only it won't pop up in My Computer so you can read the memory stick. Thumb drive doesn't light up either. If I boot into the bios with the thumb drive plugged in to the USB port it does light up.

Unless someone has a suggestion I'll try a fresh OS install on a new hard disk. At least that will confirm if the problem is hardware or software based.

[Dstoop]

Sounds like one of two things to me. Either your motherboards USB controller is crapping out, which in my experience is commonly one of the first things to go as a board starts failing, or for some reason the data part of the USB connection is working fine but the power via usb is failing, which could be caused by a few different things but does explain why very low draw devices such as keyboard/mouse work fine but beefier connections like cameras and thumbdrives are sketchy.

If you have a USB add-in PCI card available, i'd give it a try and see if it works.

[sm625]

For clarification, when you say your mouse and keyboard work, you are saying that you can plug your mouse into port 3 and it will work, then you can unplug the mouse and plug a flash drive into port 3 and it will not work, but then you can plug the mouse back into port 3 and it will still work?

[Kenmitch]

Originally Posted by Nessism

Since the problem has been intermittent until recently, wouldn't that suggest a hardware based failure? Have a spare hard drive so maybe a fresh OS install to test if the hardware is properly functioning? What do you guys think?

Wouldn't hurt to try it out I guess. Another option is to just delete all your usb devices and see if it'll fix the issue.

To get rid of unwanted drivers, devices, or services, use the following steps:
1) Open the Start menu
2) Type in cmd and right click run as admin.
3) At the command prompt, type in set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1 and press Enter. (Note that nothing seems to happen. This is expected. You are actually setting an environment variable which is going to help you to see hidden devices.)
4) On the next command prompt line, type devmgmt.msc and press Enter. This will launch the Windows Device Manager Console.
5) In the Device Manager Console, from the View menu, select Show Hidden Devices.

Look under disk drives and under usb controller devices and uninstall the ones you know are your thumb drives etc. usb mass storage, etc.

[mlc]

How did you reinstall driver?

try this..
1) plug in the device not being recognized
2) go into Device Manager and go to the USB/universal serial bus controllers section
3) see if it lists the storage device that you have connected to your PC.... if so, then uninstall the device using that option...
4) then physically remove the USB device not being recongnized, and reboot...
5) now reinsert the device, and it should reinstall the device drivers... and see if it's recognized....

If not.. check for a bios update for your board..

[Nessism]

Originally Posted by sm625

For clarification, when you say your mouse and keyboard work, you are saying that you can plug your mouse into port 3 and it will work, then you can unplug the mouse and plug a flash drive into port 3 and it will not work, but then you can plug the mouse back into port 3 and it will still work?

Yes, the port will function with the keyboard or mouse plugged in, but it won't work with the a thumb drive (for example).

Some times when rebooting with a thumb drive attached, a window will pop up in the bottom right saying "drivers are being installed" or something to this effect. When trying to access the device from My Computer, it won't be there. Something related to USB device not working, code 10.

Thanks for all the suggestions you guys are throwing my way. I'll walk down the list as suggested as soon as I get home and give them a try.

A few more random, but maybe related things... Updated the bios already. Have a solid state drive so bios storage is set to AHCI. Some times when the machine is trying to use a USB device, such as the printer, it will lock up solid. Had to hard reboot a bunch of times. My USB wireless dongle failed, got really hot. Wonder if it shorted and burned something on the board?

[mlc]

when you power on machine.. go into bios and check the voltage readings on the 5v rails.. to see if they are within spec...

[Nessism]

Tried deleting the USB devices in Device Manager but it did nothing.

Reinstalled OS on fresh hard drive and thumb drive seemed to be working. Installed the USB wireless adapter and it connected fine...then the system locked up. Reboooted a few different times and same thing every time. Uninstalled the wireless adapter and the system seems to work fine. USB thumb drive works and everything.

Went back to the old OS install/HD, uninstalled the wireless adapter and the USB thumb drive is working fine now. Had the thumb drive open and plugged in my camera at the same time and everything is working fine. Seems the wireless adapter was causing the problem. Learned something on this one.

Going to go buy another wireless adapter and see how it goes. Fingers crossed....

[Nessism]

Update part 2

Installed the latest driver for the wireless adapter and everything seems to be working. Fingers crossed. Never would have thought that the driver would cause the entire USB system to falter.

Anyone have a suggestion on how to stress the USB system to make sure it's really stable?