Question Weird USB issues on new motherboard ?

[ObnoxiousWalrus]

About two weeks ago, I bought a pretty cheap board, a Gigabyte H310M S2P, because my old one couldn't fit in the new computer case I bought for better cooling. After installing it, everything seemed to work, until all of the USB ports started acting weird. I have no idea what's causing it, nor what the actual problem is, but here's my observations :

1. After a little while, USB ports seem to extremely suddenly "stop" giving out power.
2. It doesn't actually stop giving power though, because anything that was plugged in before the ports start acting up will still work.
3. Unplugging something (E.g my keyboard or my mouse) after this "decrease" in power output will obviously make it stop working, because it's not plugged in anymore, but plugging it back in doesn't make it work again, as if the board doesn't realize I just plugged in something.
4. Rebooting the computer repeats this entire process, where the ports will initially work normally until they randomly stop giving power again. The time it takes for this to happen can range between 5 minutes to roughly two days, as they're the shortest and longest times I've experienced.
5. I thought I could just do without unplugging anything ever, but another problem, and most likely the biggest one, is that my USB wifi adapter stops working as soon as the power goes out, regardless of if it was plugged in before or after the power loss. This sets it apart of the other USB devices that will still work as long as I don't unplug them.
6. In multiple instances, this power loss happened shortly after starting a download (E.g a steam game), but I've also downloaded 100 GB+ games without anything happening, so I'm not sure if these are coincidences or not.
7. Once the power loss has occured, trying to shut down or reboot the PC will get me stuck in an infinite loop of loading. I once left it for like 30 minutes and the PC was still in the process of shutting down/rebooting, which forces me to forcefully shut down the PC everytime by holding down the power button.
8. Once the power loss has occured, I'm unable to uninstall USB drivers in device manager, as it gets me stuck in an infinite loop of loading, similarly to the previous point. I need to shut down device manager through the task manager to forcefully cancel the uninstallation.

At this point I feel like I've tried everything, including the most drastic measures possible.

Here's everything I've tried :

• Installing the motherboard drivers from the website instead of the DVD that was included in the box.
• Resetting the CMOS battery.
• Disabling USB Selective Suspend.
• Windows Reset when drives other than C: were unplugged.
• Windows Reset when drives other than C: were plugged.
• Windows Reset while keeping personal files.
• Windows Reset while deleting everything.

Hell, I even figured the motherboard was faulty, and I sent it back for replacement. I received the new one yesterday and this one has exactly the same problem. I guess that means the issue is on my end, which prompted me to create this post.

Finally, here's my specs. Nothing too insane, but everything worked seamlessly until I changed the motherboard.

• Intel Core i7-9700
• GTX 1660 Ti
• 16 GB RAM
• Corsair VS500 PSU

Does anyone have the slightest idea of what the problem might be, and what the best course of action would be?

 

[dwd999]

Did you go through the Device Manager Properties for each usb port or device and check the Power Management tab to make sure that the option to Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power is NOT checked and enabled?

 

[ObnoxiousWalrus]

Did you go through the Device Manager Properties for each usb port or device and check the Power Management tab to make sure that the option to Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power is NOT checked and enabled?

Thank you for the reply!

I never thought of that. I just did for every port for which the option was available, we'll see if that fixes it.

However, I don't see how that would fix the problem, as I never turned off that option for my old motherboard and no such issue ever arose. Why is that?

 

[dwd999]

It depends on what Windows decides is best at the time its installed on any computer. This is a real problem with Windows where it just decides on its own which devices can be turned off whenever Windows wants because it thinks a device is not being used enough. They seem to think that everyone is using a battery powered computer and needs to save power. The same goes for the Power Options where Windows just decides on its own the use a Balanced power plan even when its not necessary because you have a full powered computer. At no time does the installer ever ask if you want full power or some form of reduced power, which drives me crazy.

 

[ObnoxiousWalrus]

Did you go through the Device Manager Properties for each usb port or device and check the Power Management tab to make sure that the option to Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power is NOT checked and enabled?

It depends on what Windows decides is best at the time its installed on any computer. This is a real problem with Windows where it just decides on its own which devices can be turned off whenever Windows wants because it thinks a device is not being used enough. They seem to think that everyone is using a battery powered computer and needs to save power. The same goes for the Power Options where Windows just decides on its own the use a Balanced power plan even when its not necessary because you have a full powered computer. At no time does the installer ever ask if you want full power or some form of reduced power, which drives me crazy.

Alright, that didn't work. Power still goes down shortly after starting a download. Any other ideas?

 

[dwd999]

IDK, other possibilities include the motherboard being defective because of its age; the power supply being inadequate; too many usb devices for the motherboard's power lanes; etc. You could try removing the gpu and shifting to the cpu's built in video to see if the lesser power draw helps. Also you said you disabled usb Selective Suspend, does that mean that you set every setting in the Power Controls to maximum?

 

[ObnoxiousWalrus]

IDK, other possibilities include the motherboard being defective because of its age; the power supply being inadequate; too many usb devices for the motherboard's power lanes; etc. You could try removing the gpu and shifting to the cpu's built in video to see if the lesser power draw helps. Also you said you disabled usb Selective Suspend, does that mean that you set every setting in the Power Controls to maximum?

As stated in my post, the motherboard is brand new, it's even twice as new because I returned it, and received a replacement with the exact same problem, so the problem must be on my end. As for the PSU, it's brand new aswell, I bought it because my old one only had a 2x2 pin cable and the new motherboard only had a 2x4 pin port. An in-depth calculation of required wattage gives roughly 375W, and even then, as far as I know, for me it's unthinkable that just changing the motherboard would cause such an increase in required wattage.

Again, issues started to arise the exact same day I changed the motherboard. I even reassembled my old PC while waiting for the second board to be delivered and it was just seamless gaming, just like it has always been, so the motherboard is most definitely the issue here.

And finally, yes, I did set every power setting available to maximum.

There's also one thing I forgot to mention. I have a fan hub in which two fans are connected. This hub is connected only to the single 4pin sys connector on the motherboard. Could the fact that two fans are connected to only one port be the cause of the issue?

 

[Deadroad503]

If you installed the Autogreen app from gigabyte, look there to see if it shutting off unused ports. Also check your power management settings. Have you done a load optimized in the bios? Also, in device manager under USB, do you have any ASMedia controllers? I recently had a similar issue with my Z390 board where all of my ports on the ASMedia controller would suddenly dropout until I restarted and about 2 days later they would drop again. After a couple months the ASMedia controller failed completely and I could only access the system remotely because I couldn’t get any usb kb/mouse to recognize.

 

[BFG-9000]

Are you saying you installed a new motherboard and never bothered to reinstall Windows, only "Reset your PC" it?

Because that's exactly the kind of glitchiness I'd expect running Windows that was installed on another motherboard.

 

[ObnoxiousWalrus]

Are you saying you installed a new motherboard and never bothered to reinstall Windows, only "Reset your PC" it?

Because that's exactly the kind of glitchiness I'd expect running Windows that was installed on another motherboard.

Well how would I go about reinstalling it? I did the procedure with the media creation tool and everything.

 

[BFG-9000]

To clean install, you boot from the install media, delete the partitions on the disk, and tell the installer to install to the now empty space.

The "Reset your PC" feature restores Windows to the state it was when Windows was first installed... on the other motherboard.

 

[ObnoxiousWalrus]

To clean install, you boot from the install media, delete the partitions on the disk, and tell the installer to install to the now empty space.

The "Reset your PC" feature restores Windows to the state it was when Windows was first installed... on the other motherboard.

I see, I never thought of that! How do I delete the partitions from the boot menu though? I don't remember seeing such an option when booting up from the USB drive. Is there any guide on how to do this? All I can find are walkthroughs about the "Refresh" or "Reset" options included in the windows settings.

I also have a couple of questions :

1. Is it fine to leave drives other than C: unplugged for maximum safety? That's what I did once, but I'm not quite sure if these drives are completely devoid of any settings from the old motherboard. I would guess that such core settings would be stored only on the drive the OS is installed on, but could you confirm this?
2. Can I back up the AppData folders, Program Data folder, both Program Files folder and paste them into the newly installed windows, or will that cause issues? I did exactly that each time I reset the PC from the settings, but I'm not sure if part of the issue I have now might be due to that, or if that might cause more issues later.

Thank you!

 

[BFG-9000]

When it asks where to install Windows to, you click on the partitions one at a time and an "X" appears in red below. Click it and repeat until all are gone, then highlight the empty space to install to

It is highly inadvisable to install Windows with more than one disk connected, because then you don't know which disk will end up with the ~100MB boot partition. If you ever remove that disk it'd result in an unbootable system despite C: still being installed

If you install the programs again the same way as you did before, then copying over AppData and Program Data should not cause issues, at least not to your USB drivers. Of course if you install the programs exactly the same way as before then all of the contents of both Program Files should be exactly the same and there is no reason to copy those. In fact it's inadvisable to do so because things may not go exactly how you remembered, and any programs you fail to install again will not have any registry entries.

 

[ObnoxiousWalrus]

When it asks where to install Windows to, you click on the partitions one at a time and an "X" appears in red below. Click it and repeat until all are gone, then highlight the empty space to install to

It is highly inadvisable to install Windows with more than one disk connected, because then you don't know which disk will end up with the ~100MB boot partition. If you ever remove that disk it'd result in an unbootable system despite C: still being installed

If you install the programs again the same way as you did before, then copying over AppData and Program Data should not cause issues, at least not to your USB drivers. Of course if you install the programs exactly the same way as before then all of the contents of both Program Files should be exactly the same and there is no reason to copy those. In fact it's inadvisable to do so because things may not go exactly how you remembered, and any programs you fail to install again will not have any registry entries.

I forgot to mention that most of my programs and apps are installed on the D: drive, so they would remain untouched during the windows reinstallation. I'm only asking because I know some of them store data in the C: drive, most commonly in AppData and Program Data, so wouldn't running those programs with the AppData/Program Data entries missing cause issues?

 

[Nemesia]

I forgot to mention that most of my programs and apps are installed on the D: drive, so they would remain untouched during the windows reinstallation. I'm only asking because I know some of them store data in the C: drive, most commonly in AppData and Program Data, so wouldn't running those programs with the AppData/Program Data entries missing cause issues?

Most of them will add registry entries too. You will have to reinstall most apps unless they are apps that you don't have to install where they can run by just clicking the executable.

 

[ObnoxiousWalrus]

Most of them will add registry entries too. You will have to reinstall most apps unless they are apps that you don't have to install where they can run by just clicking the executable.

I see, thank you. I'll begin the process as soon as I'm done backing up my stuff.

 

[ObnoxiousWalrus]

When it asks where to install Windows to, you click on the partitions one at a time and an "X" appears in red below. Click it and repeat until all are gone, then highlight the empty space to install to

It is highly inadvisable to install Windows with more than one disk connected, because then you don't know which disk will end up with the ~100MB boot partition. If you ever remove that disk it'd result in an unbootable system despite C: still being installed

If you install the programs again the same way as you did before, then copying over AppData and Program Data should not cause issues, at least not to your USB drivers. Of course if you install the programs exactly the same way as before then all of the contents of both Program Files should be exactly the same and there is no reason to copy those. In fact it's inadvisable to do so because things may not go exactly how you remembered, and any programs you fail to install again will not have any registry entries.

Most of them will add registry entries too. You will have to reinstall most apps unless they are apps that you don't have to install where they can run by just clicking the executable.

Alright, I did it. However, now I can't stay connected to the internet for more than 15 seconds.

The wifi adapter was in the "other devices" section of the device manager, showing that drivers were not installed. After installing them with a flash drive and another computer, it moved to the "network adapters" section and internet worked for about 5 minutes. Now however, it keeps disconnecting after about 10 seconds. Everytime it does, I need to go in network settings and reconnect it, it's driving me insane.

Something weird is that while the system tray icon shows no connection (the little planet icon with the barred circle) but the windows settings shows the PC as connected to my wifi with no error messages whatsoever, despite having no internet access in any shape or form.

I already tried turning off the power saving option of every device in the device manager, but it made no difference.

Any ideas?