Asus Z97-A "power surge on USB"

[thefinder808]

Hey guys, I just upgraded to an Asus Z97-A and an i7 4790k with Noctua NH-D14 cooler. Whenever I overclock at all, whether I use the AI Suite 3, the automatic overclock in the BIOS, or manually in the BIOS I get a "power surge on USB port" error during stress testing and my USB ports stop working until reboot. I've tried overclocking just 100 mhz, with voltage at 1.25 (temps were great) and still the error comes during stress testing. I did a little research and it looks like it's not just me: http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/66282-asus-z97-lga1150-motherboard-review-15.html

So the guys over at hardwarecanucks found that it's the Intel Extensible USB 3.0 driver that's causing this problem, and removing it solves the issue. I tried unstalling it in the device manager, and usually it let's me select to remove the driver files too, but it doesn't in this case. After reboot, instead of installing the Windows 8.1 default drivers, the Intel Extensible drivers automatically get reinstalled. It seems I can't get rid of them! Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Alex Kelly]

Hi there! Try installing this.
http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/misc/utils/Intel_Chipset_Win7-8-8-1_VER10014.zip
Let me know how it goes! If it doesn't work I'll continue to help until this is solved.

Best of luck

 

[thefinder808]

Hi there! Try installing this.
http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/misc/utils/Intel_Chipset_Win7-8-8-1_VER10014.zip
Let me know how it goes! If it doesn't work I'll continue to help until this is solved.

Best of luck

Thanks for the reply Alex, unfortunately I already installed that. I tried uninstall/reinstall as well and it didn't help. I also tried contacting Asus through the website, but it seems their site is partially broken so I wasn't able to send them a message. I also called, but the person on the other end didn't really know what I was talking about, I don't think they could really understand me as their English wasn't very good.

 

[Alex Kelly]

After you remove the Intel USB3 driver, try this.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2500967
Hope it works for you!

 

[thefinder808]

I actually e-mailed the Hardware Canucks guys and they told me the latest bios update fixed the problem for them. For some reason the newest bios version didn't show up on the ez update software Asus provided so I downloaded from their site and it worked. Now I'm having another problem, no matter what I set the clock speed to when I run prime 95 for testing the cpu stays at 4 ghz. Even with everything set to default. I think it has something to do with Windows power options as this started when I went from performance to balanced, although switching back didn't help. Anyone experienced this before?

 

[Alex Kelly]

Good to hear! That's very strange, the power options would not be causing this. Could you try resetting your CMOS? Sounds like the BIOS is having issues applying your settings.