Help - Asus Z87 Pro USB issues are making me pull my hair out!

[glugglug]

It took a long time to even install Windows 8 with the flaky USB on this thing. After flashing the BIOS to the latest at least it recognized the mouse and keyboard most of the time, although they seemed to be resetting every 15 seconds or so so you had to stop typing during the reset.

At one point I had this working, but decided to do a clean reinstall after updating the BIOS.

With Windows and USB 3.0 drivers installed I thought I had gotten past this. But the mouse and the keyboard are about the only thing working properly off any of the USB ports (I've tried USB2.0, Intel USB3.0, and ASMedia USB 3.0 with just about everything!).

I had had some instability from the Asus Dual Processors app so I uninstalled all the Asus stuff and tried with just the Intel and ASMedia drivers initially. The system recognizes my external quad-drive enclosure for backups, but only for about 10 seconds, before it popped up a "USB device not recognized" balloon and the drive disappeared. It also saw my webcam and the webcam controls worked, but I couldn't get any video feed. It complained that the webcam is a USB 2.0 device and might not be compatible with USB 3.0 ports even when it was plugged in to a 2.0 port. So I reinstalled the ASUS AiSuite except for the Dual Processors app. It seems for some bizarre reason AiCharge and the hotfix for that needs to be installed to use the webcam?? Anyways, it still doesn't fix the issue with USB drives disappearing after 10s.


Does anyone have USB storage working with an Asus Z87 board? If so, what BIOS version, BIOS settings, Intel, and AsMedia drivers are you using?

 

[sm625]

Do you have a cable(s) going from your front usb ports to the motherboard usb ports? If so try unplugging. I've had a short that caused very flaky behavior. Also, take a really good look at your usb ports. The little plastic piece inside can break. See the top usb port in the image below.

 

[glugglug]

The motherboard doesn't have any back panel USB 2.0 ports, so the only 2.0 ports have a cable running to the top of the case. I can try disconnecting the case USB3.0 ports, but the problem exists with ALL the USB ports, even the ones using the ASMedia controller (the ones on the case are using the Intel controller).

Looking at device manager more, it looks like the USB controllers are still actually using the standard MS drivers, no matter how many times I attempt to reinstall the Intel and ASMedia drivers. Searching around, it seems the Intel USB driver installer doesn't actually support Windows 8, with their site saying that is because the built in MS drivers should work, but apparently "there are some devices that currently don’t work with the Microsoft stack on the Intel USB 3.0 host controller" [http://plugable.com/2012/12/01/wind.../windows-8-and-intel-usb-3-0-host-controllers). There is a hacky way to install the Intel drivers by editing the INF files to say they are for Win8 not just Win7, and reboot with driver signature checking disabled, but I tried this (with my own attempt at editing the INF) and had no USB at all on reboot, so I had to log into the box remotely to uninstall USB devices and have the system put at least the MS ones back automatically.

Intel updated their download page for series 8 chipset with new drivers last week, so the download is no longer compatible with the hacked INF files on the above site.

I'm thinking it may be time for another clean install this time using the Windows 8.1 RTM and hoping that has it fixed :-( If I install the RTM now, is that activated permanently, or will I need to do it again after 8.1 is released?

 

[glugglug]

Tried the Windows 8.1 RTM. That fixes the USB - webcam, keyboard, & mouse work immediately after install, USB storage works after installing drivers from the motherboard CD. But 8.1 breaks the Digital Cable Advisor so that I can't use the InfiniTV, so back to the drawing board, unless someone has a fix for Digital Cable Advisor in 8.1 (in fact as far as I can tell, every single thing in the "Extras" section of media center is broken in 8.1).

Edit: Got it working The trick I used is below:

1. Download digital cable advisor as an add-in from here instead of using the one in the gallery.

2. Run Mikinho's OverrideDigitalCableAdvisor.cmd tool from here If you haven't completed step one, the script will abort without doing anything because it can't find the windows 8 versions of the .NET assemblies it's trying to use.

3. Run the Digital Cable Advisor from "Extras Library", not "Extras Gallery". It will still "Not Respond", but from here it gives you the option of whether to kill it or leave it running (leave it running!)

4. Go through TV setup - it will now allow you to activate the CableCARD.