Usbs not detecting anything in windows

[Curfish]

Hi All

A Week ago my brother started having problems with his usb ports, he'd boot up and they would be fine they after a while his keyboard would stop working, so he would reboot and all would be well then after a while his mouse would stop working. This would continue to happen sometimes the keyboard some times the mouse.

He bought it to me and when we pluged it in nothing would fire up, light on the motherboard but wouldnt power on, tried the psu in a old system it worked fine, tried my psu in his system and it booted up, which reminded me when we built his system is was right on the edge psu wise.

so we ordered a new psu 600w 4 x 12v rails. fitted it and the system booted fine. but the usbs wouldnt work. he'd be asking for a reformat for a while and was keen to try vista so thought hell with it and reformated with vista using ps2 devices. installed fine but usb still didnt work, so did all the driver updates and windows updates still no usbs working.

so started some investigation and i can access my 16gb usb drive thru bios no problems and if i boot with the usb drive plugged in windows sees and and allows me to access it. but if i boot the system and then plug the device in i get nothing. this doesnt work with mice or keyboards they just dont work period.

so has the old psu fried the usbs etc?? why wont the mass storage plug and play??

the systems based around a asus p5b.

i have flashed the bios to the lastest version, i have set the bios to its default settings.

any advice or suggestion would be greatly appriciated.

Cheers

Curfish

[sleepyhead]

Have you tried re-installing the USB drivers for windows?

[Curfish]

well the fresh install didnt work, and i have installed last intel inf update and they dont work either

[sleepyhead]

I take it you checked out device manager to make sure the drivers for the USB are working correctly?

(not trying to insult you here, just trying to go back to basics).

[Curfish]

yeah everything is there as it should be, 8 Intel ICH USB Controllers and a similar number of usb root hubs. all say working

[sleepyhead]

Are these onboard USB or off USB headers? If USB headers, just check to make sure everything is seated in right, and if like my current PC case, check the pins are connected correctly.

Is there anything software wise that is restricting access to the USB devices? Like some overly protective AV/Firewall proggie?

[Curfish]

its all usbs 2 on the front on a header and 4 on the back on the motherboard.

i have no software installed at the moment its a fresh install. think i need to get a usb card and test that see if that works ok

[sleepyhead]

Is it not detecting any USB device on ANY of the USB ports?

I'm wondering if there are any specific motherboard drivers for the USB ports on that board...have you tried both intel reference motherboard drivers and Asus version?

[Curfish]

nope no usbs working in windows. asus just have older intel inf drivers on their website but ill give them a try

[MaddAussie]

Is the USB enabled in the bios?

[Curfish]

yes madd aussie

[sleepyhead]

If it works in BIOS...then I can't see why it would not work in Windows unless it's a driver issue/conflict.

I wonder if you can try and run an OS straight off your USB, sure I read about a version of linux that was USB drive bootable (50MB in size). That way you can test if the USB connections on the motherboard are fully functioning.

[Curfish]

i thought sod it and bought a £5 usb card thats seems to work fine.

cheers for the help tho

[TheAnimus]

i'd guess this has to be a BIOS setting issue, based on the fact that it dosen't detect the stick when its plugged in whilst the OS is running, but it does if gone via the BIOS.

tried re-setting to factory defaults?

[Curfish]

yes one of the first things i tried, also flashed the bios to the latest version which also reset it