USB hub disabled in bios - weirdest problem Ive seen

[Nvidiaguy07]

Title might be a little misleading - I have been struggling with this for a few days now. After troubleshooting, Ive discovered that:

When my Powered usb 3.0 hub is plugged in, I cannot use my keyboard in bios (or grub). Even if the keyboard is not plugged in to the motherboard (eg usb hub plugged in, keyboard plugged into the motherboard - not the hub).

When I remove the hub, I can use the keyboard in bios.

Everything works fine once booting into windows/linux (everything plugged into hub), but the problem is that it disables it in bios and grub - so this is a problem when I want to select a different OS to use.

My first instinct was that the hub or wire connecting the hub was the problem - but tried a different hub, and even tried a active usb extension cable with the same results. When either of those plugged in it would disable everything - but then once it booted into the OS everything would power on and work.

It almost seems like when something draws enough power it shuts everything else down.

Not really sure what to think. Possibly a dying motherboard?

Heres my build:
Intel i5 3570k
Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H (rev 1.0) Bios F14
Noctua NH-D14
G.SKILL Ares Series 16GB (4x4GB)
Gigabyte G1 GTX 970
SAMSUNG 840 250GB SSD - dual boots windows 10 (just upgraded) and linux mint
Storage: Western Digital Black 2TB, Western Digital 1.5 TB, 5TB Seagate HDD
LITE-ON DVD Burner
Antec P280 Black Aluminum
Corsair HX650
HooToo HT-UH010 USB Hub

Ive also had some other ridiculous problems recently as well - not being able to boot to USB when connected through displayport, but works fine with HDMI. really weird stuff.

 

[piasabird]

I know USB booting works differently in Win 10 than in win 7. The drivers are different. That is why it is hard to load win 7 from USB.

 

[Ketchup]

Some of the USB ports on that board are coming through a VIA USB hub on the board. If you pick one of those ports, it may not like going hub to hub to device.

 

[piasabird]

This was bugging me yesterday. I was trying to load an OS (Win 10) via a Microsoft USB, with no OS present on any drive (initial Install). I just purchased a Gigabyte GA-H110N skylake motherboard. So I wasted my time fiddling with the BIOS and trying to load the OS from the Front USB connector on the front of my case. As soon as I moved the USB flash device to the rear USB port, it worked the first time. My only guess is that in the booting process maybe not all the USB devices are fully configured.

At this point I had not installed the Chipset Drivers. One of the drivers on the chipset disk is a driver for USB.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I've noticed, on the GA-BXBT-1900 J1900 Gigabyte Brix units, at least with F8 BIOS, if you want to access BIOS, the keyboard has to be plugged into the unit directly, or a primary hub, but NOT a secondary (daisy-chained) hub.

 

[bruceb]

Good rule of thumb is always connect a USB Keyboard or a USB Mouse directly to rear case mounted USB Ports ... These are the ones directly from the motherboard and not from any wiring to the front panel or going through any usb hubs. Most times, the usb hubs will be active only after the computer is fully booted up. The usb on the motherboard ports will always work.

 

[nerp]

I don't seem to have an issue with keyboard in a USB hub, even to get into BIOS. It's a powered USB hub, though, so maybe that makes a difference?

 

[Nvidiaguy07]

So figured it out - or managed to find a work-around (depends how you look at it).

I have 6 usb ports on the back of my pc. 4 are usb 3.0 and 2 are usb 2.0. Now like I said If a hub (usb 3.0 in this case) is connected to a usb 3.0 port, ALL those ports are disabled, so even if my keyboard is plugged in to a different usb 3.0 port on the back of the PC, and NOT the hub, it still wouldnt work.

What worked for me was plugging in the keyboard by itself in the usb 2.0 port. This pretty much echos what others have said here, about plugging right into the motherboard and what ketchup said about going hub to hub. I guess it never occurred to me that even if all 4 usb 3.0 ports were disabled, the 2.0 would still work.

Thanks to all for the advice!