Front USB ports not working, but rear USB ports work…

0pTicaL · 21 Jul 2013

This is a brand new custom built PC for web browsing for a motel lobby.

Win7 Home Premium
AMD A4-3300 Llano
MSI A55M-P33 FM1
Rosewill FBM-02 MicroATX Mini Tower

Running latest BIOS and latest drivers downloaded directly from manufacturer's website.

I tried switching between all 3 internal headers and none of them would detect the flash drive.

If I plug the drive in the rear ports it detects right away leading me to suspect the case's ports might be defective but I don't have another USB 2.0 card lying around to confirm.

Based on this info does it seem likely that the front ports themselves are faulty?

Britton30 · 21 Jul 2013

You might check to see if the case end of the USB cables are properly plugged into the front panel holding the headers. Some board need more than one brand of USB drivers, Renesas, NEC, etc.

0pTicaL · 21 Jul 2013

I double check all connections on the mobo before I put the side panel back on. I've built ~20 machines using the MSI A55M-P33 FM1 board and this is the first time I encountered a problem with the front ports. The USB drivers on this AMD build is a all-in-one-package. There are only 4 drivers installations for the board and it's done, unlike Intel with drivers all over the place.

Britton30 · 21 Jul 2013

The only way I know to check then would be to plug in another front USB panel to the 9-pin headers and test them. Sounds like they may well be defunct.

0pTicaL · 21 Jul 2013

Yeah, looks like I'm going to have to make a trip. Going to dig through old mobo boxes and see if there's any USB 2.0 brackets lying around.

GeneO · 21 Jul 2013

Bad cable? More likely than three headers failing.

0pTicaL · 22 Jul 2013

That's my hunch as well, very unlikely that all 3 headers would fail. It's a $20 case, so I can't expect too much.

Getting my round of bad luck with this order, the $22 550W (more like 150W real watts) LOGISYS fan separated from the coil.

fireberd · 22 Jul 2013

NEVER use a cheap power supply. Along with being overrated (watts) they tend to have poor DC voltage regulation and that can be a cause of motherboard failures. Cheap cases and "you get what you pay for".

0pTicaL · 22 Jul 2013

Frankly, from experience, there's nothing wrong with cheap power supplies. It's more of a myth than actual fact and oftentimes it depends on how it's used(load). The big boys from HP and Dell use them all the time. The system I built will never pull more than 100W which is way below the "real watts" this Logisys 550W can supply. Knowing that fact it's safe to use a cheap PSU on a build like this. If this build was pulling 250W+ I would never use a cheap psu.

When it comes to cheap PSUs it all boils down to load and environment, and the occasional broken fan…

fireberd · 22 Jul 2013

Dell power supplies tend to be under-rated. e.g. a 300 watt Dell OEM power supply is more like a 350 to 375 watt power supply - and has very good DC voltage regulation.

I've been in electronics (I was the Ampeg guitar/bass amplifier factory repair tech in Nashville at one time) and computer maintenance since before PC's. I've seen motherboard failures that were traced to cheap power supplies. I used to do a lot of user support on the Dell forums and we saw a lot of hardware (motherboard) failures caused by users that used cheap power supplies in their Dell.