USB Power Surge Killing Dance Pads?

[Aepheme]

I built my computer last Spring and haven't really paid much attention to it since then. It holds up fairly well: Geforce 7600 GS, Fortran 450W, 3700+, and EP-9NPA+ Ultra.

Recently, I decided to try out some DDR (yes, late adopter, I know). I purchased these two pads from BNS. The major forums (such as ddrfreak.com) seemed to recommend these as the best available (sub-$300 pads). Each one has a USB connector. They both worked perfectly the first time. The second time I plugged them in, one failed to register at all. That sucked. The third time I tried, the OTHER one failed to register, too!

There are two choices here:
1. Shoddy Asian Manufacturing
2. My Computer Kills Devices!

Is #2 possible? One quirk I've noticed over the last 4 months (not exactly sure when it started) is that it often takes me 20 or so random presses of the power button to get my computer on. I've always thought that this was just due to bad wiring in the case, but might this indicate a power supply problem? Something that produces power surges through USB that results in dead peripherals?

Any thoughts? A way to test out the theory? I don't want to kill the replacements, too!

 

[Arcex]

Theoretically it's possible but if there was a power surge running through your PC strong enough to short a peripheral like that I'd expect it to be frying something else in the PC as well.

On the other hand the pushing the power button numerous times thing makes me nervous, with soft switching pushing the power button doesn't actually turn the power on, it sends a signal to the PC asking it to check the PSU and see if it would be OK to power up, then if the signal is clear the PSU goes to work, so if you have to keep hitting the button like that it could indicate the PSU is going batty.

Get a PSU tester or have it tested and see if it's ok, or if you have a spare lying around switch it out and see if either problem keeps happening.