[SOLVED] USB Ports Become Unresponsive/Disabled While Transferring Data

[ZerozxCJ]

I built a PC about a month ago, haven't had any major problems besides a booting issue that seems to have been resolved. Now I think I've run into another problem with the USB ports.

A couple of weeks ago, I had connected my mom's camera to my computer via its USB cable to transfer some pictures and while I was viewing/saving the pictures, the camera was repeatedly disconnecting and reconnecting. Since her camera and its USB cable are both old, I didn't think much of it and carried on.

Now today I've been using a few 2.0 and 3.1 USB flash drives to copy/transfer game files for a PlayStation Classic. During this process, the transfer rate will either slowly or immediately drop to 0 and then after a few seconds, the flash drive I'm transferring to/from will disconnect, my mouse will become unresponsive (wireless USB) and my internet will disconnect (USB WiFi adapter). My keyboard, however, will continue to work and it is also connected via USB. All of the ports are not being affected it seems.

The data transfer seems to fail more often if I'm transferring more/larger files. If I transfer one game at a time, for example, it usually works. If I try to transfer, say, 5 at once, it seems more likely to drop to 0 and fail. It's as if the transfer will randomly fail and then that will cause some, but not all, of the USB ports to become unresponsive or disabled. A couple of times when this happened I could wait a minute and they would become responsive again, but for the most part I am having to restart my computer and then the ports are active again after rebooting.

Something else to note: I realize this likely isn't something I should do because it could corrupt my flash drive, but just FYI if it helps to diagnose the problem: when the transfer rate drops to 0 and I know the ports are about to be disabled, if I remove the USB drive that I'm transferring from/to while it is dropping to 0, this will prevent the other ports from disabling and it prevents me from having to restart the computer. I can then just plug the flash drive back in and continue.

When I first set up this computer and transferred all of my files from my external hard drive, I don't recall having this problem. I was able to transfer everything with no issue.

Someone suggested the following troubleshooting tips which I attempted and they did not work/could not find the options:

• Disable USB selective suspend in advanced power management settings
• Uncheck "let Windows disable this device" under each USB in Device Manager (note: I only found two 3.0 hubs that had this option, although there are more USB hubs in question. The USB WiFi adapter lists the option, but the mouse and keyboard do not)
• Disable DeepSleep, S-States, and/or C-States in BIOS (note: the only one of these I could find in BIOS was C-States and it was already disabled, I have no idea what these settings are or what they do)

I completed the first two troubleshooting tips one at a time and I also reversed any changes I made after they didn't work, so I'm not sure if they should be done all at once or if they are settings I should change and then leave them regardless or only if they fix the problem. Something else that may be noteworthy is I have already updated the BIOS, this is one of the first things I did after building the computer. I did NOT immediately update the chipset driver, though. That was done a couple of weeks after setting up the computer, so I'm wondering if updating the chipset driver caused this problem.

What is going on here? Is something failing or is there some type of driver I need to look into or update? I thought I had updated all relevant drivers, but maybe I missed something. Here is my build below:

EDIT: something I forgot to mention that seems questionable to me is the transfer speed. It is frequently only transferring at around 40-50Mb/s, which seems relatively slow since the USB ports are 3.0 and the flash drive I'm working with is 3.1. At one point, I was getting around 300 Mb/s, but then it will randomly stay at 40-50. Shouldn't it be faster?

PCPartPicker Part List

Type|Item|Price
:----|:----|:----
CPU | AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor | $299.99 @ Walmart
Motherboard | MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard | $114.99 @ B&H
Memory | G.Skill Ripjaws V 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 Memory | $69.99 @ Newegg
Storage | Sabrent Rocket 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive |-
Storage | Seagate Barracuda Compute 2 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive |-
Video Card | Sapphire Radeon RX 5700 XT 8 GB PULSE Video Card | $412.98 @ SuperBiiz
Case | Fractal Design Meshify C ATX Mid Tower Case | $98.98 @ Newegg
Power Supply | EVGA SuperNOVA G3 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply | $104.95 @ Walmart
Operating System | Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit | $96.99 @ Amazon
Case Fan | Fractal Design X2 GP-14 (Black) 68.4 CFM 140 mm Fan | $14.99 @ Amazon
Case Fan | Fractal Design X2 GP-14 (Black) 68.4 CFM 140 mm Fan | $14.99 @ Amazon
| Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts |
| Total | $1228.85
| Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-12-01 01:06 EST-0500 |

 

[Ketchup79]

Are you using USB ports on the case or the USB ports attached to the rear of the board?

 

[ZerozxCJ]

Are you using USB ports on the case or the USB ports attached to the rear of the board?

I use ports on the front of the case and the ones attached to the motherboard on the back.

There are two 3.0 USB ports on the front of the case, I have my USB WiFi adapter in one of them and then I leave the 2nd one open so I can easily access/use it for transferring files on USB flash drives, external hard drives, etc. As for the USB ports on the back, I currently have my wireless mouse, wired keyboard, and printer attached to those ports.

 

[Ketchup79]

What I mean is, try using the points on the back on the board for the flash drive data transfer and see if anything changes.

 

[ZerozxCJ]

What I mean is, try using the points on the back on the board for the flash drive data transfer and see if anything changes.

Sorry, I should've tried that before responding. So yes, after seeing your reply I plugged the flash drive into one of the USB ports on the back of the motherboard and it seemed to work just fine. The transfer speed didn't drop to zero and none of the other ports were disabled or deactivated. I spent about 5 minutes transferring single files and multiple, larger files and it did not fail. Obviously it could have just been a lucky 5 minutes and it still might happen later, but I guess that is somewhat encouraging if I'm at least able to use the back USB for transferring although it is much more inconvenient because of my setup. Does this mean one (or both?) of the front case ports are faulty, or is there something else I can try?

Also, something I've noticed is that when I'm transferring files from the flash drive to the computer, it stays around ~300 Mb/s, but when I'm transferring to the flash drive, it's only around ~30-70 Mb/s. Is that normal?

 

[Ketchup79]

That is pretty normal for a standard flash drive. USB is a very good technology for reading , not so much writing (works fine, just a little slower). Plus the flash drives themselves are cheap, so they don't have the fastest flash memory in them. As far as your case, did you say you tried both of the USB 3 ports? I could see a cheap and/or old case having issues like this, but it's a bit disappointing from a newer Fractal model.

 

[ZerozxCJ]

As far as your case, did you say you tried both of the USB 3 ports? I could see a cheap and/or old case having issues like this, but it's a bit disappointing from a newer Fractal model.

Alright, I moved the WiFi adapter to the other port on the front and plugged in the flash drive where the adapter was. It seems to be working when I use that port. So is it safe to assume the second 3.0 port on the front is faulty? If so, do you think it's fine to leave the WiFi adapter in that port or is there any other way to test the port? It isn't transferring files to the device itself, but it is giving me an internet connection which is used to transfer data, so I have no idea what to expect if the port is indeed faulty. If the port was failing earlier, why would that cause the other ports to disable themselves?

And yeah, it is pretty disappointing if that's what happened here with the Fractal case. I really don't feel like trying to get a replacement case or send it back just to get that part fixed, would be an ordeal putting everything back together over a USB port.

 

[Ketchup79]

Time will tell. If only using the wifi adapter for Internet, you should be fine (as considerably less data would be going back and forth). I have a Fractal case on another PC and I use the rear ports for wifi, only using the front for wireless keyboard & mouse. The only thing I have against my Fractal case is their case fans, which only lasted a couple years before they both died. I have sleeve bearing fans that are 5x as old and still working. The fact that they both died (about 6 months apart) means I probably won't buy another Fractal case, unless it is so cheap I din't mind replacing the fans later.

 

[ZerozxCJ]

Time will tell. If only using the wifi adapter for Internet, you should be fine (as considerably less data would be going back and forth). I have a Fractal case on another PC and I use the rear ports for wifi, only using the front for wireless keyboard & mouse. The only thing I have against my Fractal case is their case fans, which only lasted a couple years before they both died. I have sleeve bearing fans that are 5x as old and still working. The fact that they both died (about 6 months apart) means I probably won't buy another Fractal case, unless it is so cheap I din't mind replacing the fans later.

I appreciate your help with troubleshooting! I guess if there is a positive, at least it seems to just be one faulty USB port rather than the entire motherboard or something else failing. If it bothers me enough down the road, maybe I can just take it to a PC repair shop and they can replace the 3.0 port on the front.