Windows 7 - USB ports worked in XP not in 7

Hi,

Hope you don't mind me asking this question as it is still a puzzle to me. I have built all of the PCs currently in use - one that my youngest has access to has an MSI Motherboard in it (sorry haven't got the mobo manual to hand at the moment.
Purchased an upgrade from Windows XP Pro to Windows 7 as youngest in education got a discount on the upgrade. Windows XP has to be present at point of install - cannot be a direct install or installation upgrade from within XP. In XP all the USB ports work normally but in 7 the bottom 2 (USB2) are 'dead' in 7. The MSI forum begs to differ. And I know not to add any USB peripheral device before installing software. Processor is a 2.4 Ghz AMD Athlon 64 AM2 Processor and an AGP card (8x) that requires two power sources. Power supply is 450 W - is this too low? 1 Gb 400 MHz RAM, 170 Gb Hard Drive shared equally between Windows XP and 7.

450W psu is probably fine, 1gb of ram is really not enough as 2gb is minumn, are dual booting for a reason because you can do a clean install of Win 7 with an upgrade version of Win 7.

It wouldn't let me do a clean install - on another machine I have upgraded, backed up XP and 7 to external drive, created emergency restore DVD, wiped the drive, used the Restore DVD, deleted XP and moved 7 using Acronis Disk Director 10. Not done this with other machine yet as may need a second external drive as the 1TB has got two machines worth of backups on it plus GNU/Linux *.iso's on.

Have you installed the chipset drivers after you installed Windows 7?

That's the problem - like a lot (some could say inferior) motherboards of its ilk didn't come with chipset drivers for USB - just a reference to Microsoft XP Windows SP1a which had the specific USB 2.0 drivers! (Which is no longer available and I don't think would work in 7. Also tried a USB PCI card in but to no avail either - but same USB PCI card worked in this machine!

I've not heard of a Windows 7 flavor that must have be upgraded from a running XP install, but if that limitation is in place, might there not be others? The fact that the card also doesn't work makes me supicious. Have you investigated the possibility that there is also a USB port limitation?

Take a look at this tutorial Clean Install with a Upgrade Windows 7 Version also go to MSI website find your board and download the drivers for windows 7.

Hi James,
Thanks for your post.
1. The software was from 'Software4students.co.uk' - both my children are in full-time education and they qualified for the upgrade to Windows 7 Professional 32-bit edition and the only way it will install is if Windows XP is present on the machine - you can't do a clean install - you can however afterward (as I did on this machine) remove XP then move the Win 7 partition to where the XP one was.
2. I cannot understand why there should be a USB limitation - there are 4 usb ports on the back and two at the front of the case - all active under XP not in Windows 7.

Hi esenbe,
Thanks for the link - I'll take a look later. Regarding MSI site - they have a forum I joined and all you get (like someone else who had a similar issue) was "They should just work"!!! As I stated in earlier post, MSI mobo CD - when you clicked on USB2 drivers it posts a link to the now defunct Windows XP Service Pack 1/1a which is no longer valid (as now upto SP3/4).

Trust me, I am quite aware of the MSI forums. But, on the msi website you should be able to find your board and download drivers by OS. I would try to find it for you if I knew the model# of your board.

Hi essenbe,

Been struggling to locate the mobo manual but dug out the box the mobo came in in the attic - its an MSI K8T Neo2-F Motherboard (came with Athlon 64 2.4GHz with 1 Mb cahe processor - bundle). Hope this helps.