moby wrote:
> On Christmas day my USB ports all decided to pack up, I was not aware
> of this until I tried to connect to the internet and realised my USB
> modem was dead, I tried everything, uninstalled the USB controllers,
> scanned for new hardware and re-installed them, the computer picked up
> the new hardware everytime I uninstalled one and checked for new
> hardware, I reloaded my motherboard drivers, I tried to do a repair
> with my windows cd, absolutely nothing worked, major frustration. In
> device manager it showed everything was working perfectly. In System
> Information it showed that my external harddrive (usbmassstorage), my
> printer, scanner etc had been 'stopped'. I tried to re-set that but
> still no luck. On Boxing day my power supply blew, so I figured that
> maybe that was the problem, got a new power supply and a USB card with
> 4 ports, which is now working, but my onboard (motherboard) usb ports
> had to be disconnected, according to the guy at the pc shop they had
> all blown. Today I connected my external USB hub because he told me
> that if anything was faulty it would be worth connecting everything
> via the hub so it would blow first, hopefully. I then got a power
> surge message that said I must disconnect all hardware and click on
> 'reset', if I clicked on 'close' without clicking on 'reset' my ports
> would not work, now I am wondering if this was not the problem
> originally and that maybe someone did just click 'close' on Christmas
> day without even looking at what was on the screen. Its a bit late to
> check that now as the motherboard ports have been disconnected but I
> would like to know how to reset the ports if this ever happens again.
> Anyone got any suggestions?
There is a certain chipset with a problem. I have the chip that has
a potential problem, and I'm waiting for the day mine blows out.
The chip is the ICH5 from Intel. It is the Southbridge, and has USB 2.0
ports hosted on it. For some people, just the ports blow out. If you
look in Device Manager, all the USB entries are still there. The damage
is nearer the physical layer end of things, so the logic blocks are
still operating. They just don't know that the PHY part is not working
any longer.
In some cases, the damage is so severe, you can see if from the outside.
The chipsets affected, would be 875, 865, 848, each of which may have
an ICH5 or ICH5R Southbridge.
Here is a picture of the failure type, where the motherboard
will no longer POST, due to the damage. When just the USB ports
pop, there is no burn mark like this. The burn mark in this picture,
is actually above the pins on the chip, that power the USB ports.
So the problem is related to USB power, and is likely a "latchup"
failure.
http://onfinite.com/libraries/179057/2ea.jpg
That particular Southbridge doesn't usually have a heatsink on it,
which is why it is easy to inspect. Since your computer still
runs, I doubt there will be that burn mark.
Other chipsets are unaffected, so if you had something other than
an Intel ICH5 or ICH5R, I would not suspect this kind of
problem.
Paul