Solved Blinking light USB 3.0 port

[Orcadian]

I have a Dell precision desktop computer. It has 4 USB ports on the front, the top one of which is USB 3.0. Nothing is connected to it and in fact I only really use it every couple of months when backing up to an external drive.

Lately, when running Windows 7, a white light to the right blinks on and off frequently but with no discernible pattern. When lit up, it's the shape of a small canister (possibly intended to look like a disk drive). It looks like the device is being constantly accessed by something. The other three (USB 2.0) don't show any activity at all

Device Manager didn't find any new drivers in an online search. I've tried updating the drivers with Driver Booster but it did not find any new drivers for either the USB 3.0 controller or hub.

I also have Windows 10 on this machine and when that is booted up, the USB 3.0 does not flash. This seems to rule out a fault with the drive itself.

Any suggestions welcome; thanks.

 

[Orcadian]

I've sorted the problem out. Despite its location next to the only USB 3.0 port, this light has nothing to go with the USB drive. What put me off was that the problem isn't there on Windows 10. As W10 uses different USB drivers, I concluded that the problem was caused by one of the Windows 7 USB drivers. (I had uninstalled and reinstalled them without success.)

The light is a 'disk activity' light that responds to the hard drive only - containing Windows 7. Windows 10 is on a different type of disk (SSD) and evidently it does not activate the light. Hope this info might benefit someone else in the future.