Are all USB ports created equal? - My experience

[Homer]

So there are two USB ports on the back of my BXMaster, same as all the other (newer) computers in the house, and presumably in your house, too. Should it matter which one I plug my USB mouse in to, and which one my USB scanner? I wouldn't have thought so. However, although the mouse is recognised in both, the scanner will only work in one of them. Very embarrassing when someone brought over a document for scanning yesterday and the d*mned thing wouldn't work. Musta put them in the "right" way first time by pure chance, and then "backwards" after the last hardware upgrade, which must have been since I last used the scanner.

Anyone got any insight into this?

 

[veryape]

Sounds like a damaged usb port to me, because,as you mentioned,it doesn't,or maybe I should say shouldn't matter which port is used for what component.

 

[JackMDS]

Similar thing happened to me, so I played around to try to understand the phenomenon.

It seems that when I started fresh it did not matter which USB port I will use for any USB device, but once the device is installed changing the Port disabled some devices. I presume that each USB port has its own memory address, and once installed the driver keep the address somewhere in the Registry, then if location changes it can not find the drivers. I ended up marking the port A, B, and marking the USB plugs of various devices.

I tried to uninstall the devices and the USB root, then again, for the first install, all devices worked with both Ports, and after install, some devices became Port specific.