So, the other day I came home to my mouse and keyboard (Microsoft wireless combo) not responding. Thinking that my computer froze, I was about to restart it. First I checked the batteries. Replaced them with brand new batteries. That wasn’t the problem. Then I saw the back ground change, and the task manager was still running.
I did some checking and the front USB ports work fine. I restarted the computer, and the rears worked fine after the restart. Then they stopped again. I did some research and a lot of forums were saying to uncheck the “Allow this device to turn off to save power” which at that point I did.
The USB ports have been working fine for days and then all of a sudden, I heard the disconnect sound twice. I tried the keyboard and mouse and they didn’t respond. I hooked them up to the front ports and they are working fine (I’m able to write this). I’ve tried to refresh the ports, I checked to see if there are any updated drivers. I have the most recent drivers.
Anything connected to the rear ports won’t work. No power to any of them, and if I plug in a flash drive or something, nothing happens. I’m sure when I restart the computer, they’ll work again. I don’t know for how long though.
The funny thing is that I have nothing plugged directly into the rear ports except the mouse and keyboard. There is a passive hub (which I use for flash drives), with nothing connected at the time, a cable for my Zune dock, which was not docked at time, and another cable that isn’t connected to anything. I use that one for powered external hard drives.
This computer has been running pretty well. This problem was all of a sudden.
Oh, and nothing new installed lately.
I’m at a loss.
Old stuff that still works, somewhat….
Could this be due to a failing PSU?
In any case my process would be to replace the power supply with another spare one or one from a lazy PC.
A lot of the guys here can guide you on safely checking the voltages on a PSU, but of course you will need the testing equipment to do this.