[katana]

hey guys, the usb ports on my motherboard only work sometimes. they will commonly lose a connection with a device. the motherboard is an asus P4B533-E. and im also tippingtrying to run a pentium 4 system with 250watt psu in a pentium 3 case wouldnt help, and the fact that computer was found in the hard waste, i know i'm gonna get told to upgrade, but i cant afford it even worse is the fact that its the second best computer in our house, behind the one thats been through 2 motherboards.
(i didnt know whether to put this in drives and removable media, cpu's, motherboards and ram or here, sorry guys)

[Hybr!d]

If they are physically intermittent get an external USB hub.

[katana]

i've got a hub, but that still doesn't help. could the problem be the usb ports are getting a lack of power?

[Carbon]

Not unless your +5V rail really sucks. And I mean really sucks.

It's likely that it's some problem with the motherboard.

[Daves Computer Tips]

1. Check the connections with the headers on the MoBo.
2. Go to device manager and right click on your -EACH- USB Root Hub entry and select properties. Look for a power management tab and make sure that it is set so they don't power down. The exact tab and term differs with different Win versions. Basically if the USB hub isn't used for a while it will power down to save electricity. I've seen this cause loss of communication when you try the USB device again.
3. Download the latest chipset drivers. Go back to device manager and delete each instance of USB Root Hub and reboot. Direct windows to your chipset drivers when it asks for a file location.

[katana]

hmm. i'll try those three things. thanks

[Daves Computer Tips]

Hey Katana,

I should have been a little clearer... Try each step and see if it works before going to the next!

[serverguy]

Your motherboard has a bit of a history of USB problems. I think it is partly because it was made at the time that USB 2.0 was first coming out.

Could you buy a USB PCI Card and use the USB ports on that? They are not that expensive.

[philthomas]

Delete all the USB hub/Controllers, in Device Mangler and reboot the system, XP should automaticly install them at reboot, providing SP1/2 is installed.

[katana]

ok. i go to turn on the computer to try to fix the usbs. everything is normal till the xp loading screen which runs really slow, then the system crashes. i tested the hdd in our other computers and it doesnt work. the remainder of the computer will just be put into storage. thanks anyway guys