Question USB 3.0 ports not working drivers or hardware?

[jamesdsimone]

I have everything up and running on the HP z420 except for the USB ports. I installed the drivers from HP's website but the ports still don't work. There are a number of USB drivers listed but nothing that says USB 3.0. I booted to my linux Mint 21.1 partition and the USB 3.0 ports don't work either. USB 2.0 works ok. I can live without USB 3.0 but it would be nice to get them working. There are 4 USB 2.0 headers on the board and a USB 3.0 header. I can try that but need to figure out the driver issue.

 

[Shmee]

Check in BIOS to make sure they aren't disabled?

 

[William Gaatjes]

Also, try using SIV = System information Viewer.
it is a very handy program to check if the hardware is working and on which usb port. Also works for PCI-e.
Allows you to see cpu speed, gpu speed. temperatures and drivers.
Great program. Also has a limited user , reduced functionality option to run. And you can also run it as admin for full features and full hardware acces.

If you like the program, do not forget to give a small donation to the wonderful programmer of SIV.

SIV - System Information Viewer

SIV - System Information Viewer

rh-software.com

Example picture form the site :

 

[jamesdsimone]

Check in BIOS to make sure they aren't disabled?

You got it. The USB 3.0 controller was hidden by default. Who thought it would be a good idea to set the controller to be hidden by default? Why would you even do that? I'm not used to looking at these HP server/workstation BIOS's.

 

[lakedude]

Something happened that caused me to lose my USB 3 ports regardless of OS, so not drivers or software config. They had been working so I thought maybe static zapped the hardware.

Someone somewhere suggested a BIOS update which "fixed" the USB 3 problem (it might have just been a setting change), but then Windows wouldn't boot. That turned out to be an incorrect IDE setting, so all good now.