Weird USB

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I have a very unusual usb problem that has arisen on another machine, if anyone has any ideas or experience of this, advice is most welcome!

XP home SP2,
Antec sonata case
MSI p915 mobo
P4 3.0ghz skt775, PCI-E graphics, Sata HDD

The system has 4 usb ports on mobo at rear, and 2 usb ports on case at front. All ports are usb 2. Plugged into system using usb is infrared reciever(keyboard&mouse) Modem, printer, digital camera and sony MP3 walkman.

All usb products work in any of the rear ports, the front ports however work ok with modem and infared reciever and camera, but if i plug in my memory stick or the mp3 walkman the entire system freezes. Nothing responds instantly when i plug them in. No error msg appears on screen and i have to reboot using reset switch.

The connector for the front ports to mobo is the large keyed connector, I have checked the usb connector on mobo by plugging in my diagnostic tool which has 2 standard usb ports on it and these work fine.

After checking all the wiring, connections and the case ports I reformatted machine and it made no difference?

 

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Sounds to me like a power issue with those ports. They may not have enough power to run 'greedier' devices like your MP3 player.

 

Snap!
A customer of mine has a P4 system, with MSI board and wait for it.. a Sonata case.

Everything is fine until they plug their camera in the front and it will hang the system. The same camera works fine in the back. It isn't a PSU issue, because they only have mouse, keyboard and printer connected to the machine.

I have disconnected the front USB socket on the motherboard and never been called back there since.

Si

 

Chaps

Its definitely a case of the front USB ports not having enough power to drive things that need more than just a trickle. The front ports will be powered by really thin, crappy wires - not capable of giving enough whooomph to your devices. The rear ones will be connected to the mobo via much more powerful connections to so will be able to power all USB devices.

I've seen this countless times, on a ll sorts of cases - not just the one mentioned.

 

Well I agree that it is a power issue and I have a similar problem with my own front USB sockets but I seriously doubt that the weakest link is the wires. The voltage is around 5V and the current is 500mA hence the wires should cope. I suspect the USB controller may be more fussy about devices plugged into the additional sockets than it is on the on-board ones.

Also, some USB devices ignore the USB-2 standards..

The source

 

I bow to your superior knowledge Pete - as you can see from my description above, the intricacies of electrical wiring and other fun doo-dads aren't exactly my speciality - you should have seen the fun i had rewiring my basement...

 

LOL - don't take the piss

 

Believe me - I wasn't. You haven't SEEN the state of the wiring in my basement!

This is a patch panel I looked after a couple of years back - I think it demonstrates my 'attention to detail' with wiring perfectly...

 

Okay, you are defo a prime candidate for a comms job at BT

 

nnnghhhhh - you;ve touched a raw nerve there...

I've suffered BT incompetence twice in a week - first when their line went down and they sent two pillocks out to fix it - who titted about for an hour and a half before wiping their noses on their sleeves and saying 'Iss nuffink to do wiv our stuff mate' and pissing off again - only for the link to 'miraculously' return five minutes after they left. I wouldn't have minded so much, but it took them 13 hours to come out, and this was at 2:00 in the bloody morning...

Then, this week, we have a new router installed for a third party company that needs to connect to us - I set the firewall up, can't ping the sodding router and the BT guy who is dialling in to 'fix' the problem locks the router by entering the wrong password three times... requiring a 'site visit' that takes two working days to arrange...

You couldn't make it up!

 

Ok, I think I have come across an answer for this fault, seems MSI mobo and Antec case usb are different connector.

I believe if i snip the wire on pin 10 usboc it should work ok. Something to do with the case connector having an extra ground wire.

 

You will often find that certain USB portgroups share the bus, that includes the power and bandwidth, this is usally blocks of 2
so having all that stuff coming off the front two ports could definatly kill it from a power perspective

try moving some of the more perm connections round the back, like the modem or something
or purchase a powered USB 2 hub, might i suggest the Belkin 7 port one, I have two of them and only ever have to remove 2 cables from my PC when i goto Lans and such, the rest is from the hub itself on my desk, very nice, handy when you have keyboards, mice, usb keys, chargers, mp3 players, camera sync cables, etc etc

 

a bit late to reply, we get this at work with removeable hdd's and other devices

its deffo a power issue, the same at home with my front ports, I connect all 'larger' perm devices at rear and then just use front for things I only use here and there, failing that a powered hub will deffo cure the problem, plug into the rear and then have on desktop, even easier access and tidier than the front ports on case imo

 

I have some weird USB problems too, from time to time when I plug a USB storage device into any port front or rear, windows tries to assign a drive letter that is already in use, I have to go into disk management and manually change the drive letter to be able to access the device.

Any clues anyone??