EET student and her teacher can't solve, both out of ideas.

[Taylor Lilly]

Both me and my teacher are completely out of ideas on what could be wrong with my computer. About 2 months ago my custom PC build started malfunctioning, and I slowly lost usb functionality. Thinking it could be the CPU or mobo and wanting to upgrade in the first place, I bought a new Intel CPU and MSI motherboard and put them in. After installing Windows 7 Professional and all the drivers from the disk supplied with the mobo, I again lost complete usb function. So next time after reinstalling Windows, I skipped the 3.0 driver and my 2.0 ports worked throughout the install and after. Then after a while, I AGAIN lost usb functionality. Also, on top of that, the Network card on my new motherboard doesn't work. Been connecting to the internet through usb dongle. This problem itself is new since the component switch. I'm not sure where to go from here, and neither is my teacher (an EET computer teacher) who has been helping me throughout the process. I need more opinions, if you think you can help please try. Thank you.

 

[alexoiu]

One of your USB devices or the power supply might be defective and damage the board's USB controller.
Are you using a self powered USB device or an USB hub?
If removing all USB devices but keyboard and mouse and accessing the BIOS, does the mouse work in BIOS (test different USB ports)?

 

[mudpuppet]

The best guess at this moment is something else that's being installed somewhere at some point. USB ports slowly degrading is... random for sure but if you just bought all new hardware, but are later installing software that was on the old build, then I would examine what software you're using. The network card not working could just be a bad motherboard and I'm sure you've had it long enough at this point there isn't hope for an RMA or exchange.

When you say you lost usb function, is this something that happened over night (literally) as in it worked when you went to bed but not in the morning, or it's just something that you noticed. If your USB ports aren't working are you using PS2/mouse and keyboard or do those still work (if they are USB0. I imagine you've also done the whole reboot and checked to make sure the case USB ports were properly plugged in. What other devices do you have plugged in via USB?

If you haven't updated the drivers, look to see if you can't find a better/more recent driver via google. We've had a number of different laptops come through work that I've had to build and I generally pull the drivers off the web to use and store.

Do you have some more information about the system like make and model of all parts?