My USB cuts out when I dont use my computer for a few hours and has to reboot to come back on

[githanis]

As I said in the title, this only happens when I leave my computer and it sits for a few hours with no activity. After a few hours, I come back and it looks like my computer is locked up on my screen saver, and all of my usb items are off. If I press a key on my keyboard the screen saver will go away in about 2-3 minutes and take me to the desktop, but the usb items are all still off. I have to reboot my computer to get the usb to turn back on, and to use my usb items.

I have a powered usb splitter that I use. I bought it after this started happening thinking that maybe my usb just didn't have enough power for certain items and that was causing the problem. Plugged into the splitter is a usb intelli mouse explorer, canon scanner, and sandisk flash card reader.

All of my power setting (monitor, hard disk, etc.) are turned off, so the screen saver will be the only thing that comes on when the computer sits for a while and nothing should shut down, or go into a power saving mode.

I have also tried turning the screen saver off, but it would just do the same thing from the desktop.

This is becoming very annoying having to reboot my computer every time I let it sit for a little while. Any help from anyone would be great. I'm not a very computer knowledgable person compared to most of the people posting here, but I know the basics. Let me know if it sounds like a hardware motherboard problem, conflicting software, software or driver update needed, or any other useful information. Thank you in advance for any replies.

The rest of my system specs is as follows:

MSI K7 Pro (slot A) mother board
Antec KS-282 Mid tower case
AMD Athalon 800 mhz
NVidia geforce 3
SB Live!
CD-RW
Zip Drive (internal)
DSL with a linksys router
regular HP printer
canon usb scanner
usb san disk CF reader
usb intelli mouse
352m RAM
using Windows XP! (and XP! Plus!)

 

[githanis]

Some added information on this. I just found out this dosn't just happen when my computer sits for a while. The USB just all turned off a few minutes ago while in the middle of surfing the net. Had to re boot to get everything to turn back on. I'm thinking its a motherboard problem with the USB at this point. Can someone please give me a little advice and help me out. Thanks

 

[trmiv]

Hey, you posted. Don't really have anything to add to the USB problem on how to fix it on the motherboard. You could try getting a PCI USB add on card, then disable on-board USB, install that card, and see how USB works then with the add on card. Something like this would work. They are only like $20, so it might be worth it to try.

 

[theplanb]

well.. you could check the power saving setting on bios..I don't know..sounds like they don't like to be put into sleep.

 

[Geekbabe]

I had similar issues with a slotA 800mhz on an epox mn setup I had.I really think there were power management issues with certain boards and SLot A setup's. I tried everything I could think of including beefing up my PS but in the end the only thing that worked was replacing the mb/cpu with a new Tbird and MSI 6330.. I'm running Win2k and my usb devices are
quite stable.

 

[SaturnX]

Power Managment is most likely the problem, check BIOS, in Windows, and Device Manager (under the USB controllers). I've seen this before and adjusting power settings solved the problem.

--Mark

 

[githanis]

I checked the power settings in windows and everything was turned off, but when I checked the device manager settings for my usb the box was checked for shutting down the usb to save power. I unchecked it, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Thanks everyone.

 

[githanis]

Unfortunatley, When I woke up this morning my computer was again messed up. All the USB items were shut down and a reboot had to be done to get them to come on again.

I have turned off the power saving settings in my device manager, bios, and in windows. Still loking for some advice. :|

 

[obenton]

Look in device manager and see which USB entries are disabled or not working - see where in the chain the problem occurs.

 

[githanis]

Everything shows its working in my device manager for my usb devices right now. I'm thinking your telling me to check them though when the usb shuts down. I will try that next time. thanks

 

[githanis]

ok it happened again after being on for about 6 hours. then it happened again 2 minutes after the re boot. I tried checking my device manager while the usb was shut down. Everything under usb controllers showed working properly and all my usb devices showed working properly except my usb microsoft inttelli mouse explorer. When I tried to check the properties the whole computer locked up. When I rebooted and it happened again I again checked all the devices and everything showed fine, except my cdomputer locked again when trying to check the properties of my intellimouse. I just bought this mouse a few days ago because I was using a different intelli mouse and thought it was causing the problem. Either the mouse is conflicting with something and shutting down my usb (not a mouse problem, but another usb device conbflicting with it) or its a big coincidence.

Any idea's??