USB ports not working - please help :(

Scott Young

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7 Sep 2004
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I've been having this problem for a while now, all but 2 of my USB ports have stopped working. The front panel connecter USB ports wont work and neither will 2 of the 4 ports at the back of the pc.

It happened while playing Prince of Persia a while ago, I had my mouse, keyboard and gamepad plugged into the ports at the back of the case, when all of a sudden the gamepad stopped working. Ever since the front panel USB ports and 2 of the motherboard ports wont work.

However, I have tested the back panel ports in Mac OS x and they work fine but not when booting in the BIOS and not in windows XP.

I have an MSI Neo 4-F socket 939 board. I’m sorry if I haven’t provided enough information but I’m in a rush to leave the house atm! J
 
If they were working and then stopped and you did not change the firmware, then a bios flash will not help.

Things to check:
1) Go into bios and make sure the USB ports are all enabled.

2) Find the USB 2 drivers (install CD or download) for your MB. Uninstall the "bad" portsd and then reinstall them making sure you are using USB 2 drivers. These are loaded seperately from the USB 1 drivers.

3) The headers feeding the dead ports may be connected wrong or the cables damaged. Try moving your USB cables to different ports on the MB. See if the failure follows the cable or the header.

3) You may have fried some of your USB ports. With 6 ports some are usually on the Northbridge and some are on a seperate chip. Either set could have fried leaving the other working. To check plug an optical mouse into each USB port. The laser should light. If the laser does not light the port is dead. Get an add in USB card for extra ports or RMA the MB for repair/replacement.

It is not unusual for add-ons like USB, LAN, Sound to die. I'm using 2 MBs right now, one with a dead LAN and one with dead Sound. This generally happens with cheaper brands like ECS.
 
It seems that if push the mouse into the port juts a little and not the full way the mouse will light up for a few seconds then turn off, for exactly the same amount of time every time.
 
scott, i would first uninstall all the drivers for the usb hubs and ports you have on your machine in device manager, restart the machine and see if windows autodetects them all and see if your mouse works then.
 
Thanks guys, I tried what you said and had no success but I found that if I went into device manager and unticked the "let computer turn this device off to save power" they work fine,:) although, i cant understand why this happened in the first place as I was playing a game at the time. :dead:
 
well i kinda helped.... wheres the beef man@@?? :)
 

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