random failure of USB ports

[Ric]

I am suffering repeated random failures of USB ports on Vista Business.

The failures are not hardware problems - I have two banks of USB ports (one
PCI card, and another bunch of ports built into the PC) - and the failures
occur on both banks. It is never the entire bank - usually just one or two
ports stop working on one of the banks. It is not related to the hardware
plugged into the ports - it is entirely random.

Does anybody have any clues about what could be going on?

 

[Not Me]

I would start by looking for an updated MB driver for the USB ports.
Possible removing the USB root from device manager and let it reinstall.

 

[Ric]

It does seem to be something to do with the USB drivers. Sometimes the root
hub drivers fail, soemtimes the device itself. WHenever I get everything
working by reinstalling drivers, something else fails.

After doing some googling on this, it seems that Vista has a lot of problems
with USB drivers. SUrely they should have fixed major bugs like this by now?

 

[Tom Lake]

I am suffering repeated random failures of USB ports on Vista Business.

The failures are not hardware problems - I have two banks of USB ports
(one PCI card, and another bunch of ports built into the PC) - and the
failures occur on both banks. It is never the entire bank - usually just
one or two ports stop working on one of the banks. It is not related to
the hardware plugged into the ports - it is entirely random.

Does anybody have any clues about what could be going on?

There's a USB fix for Vista that's not installed from regular Microsoft
Updates.
It will be included in SP1 but you can get it now.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/941600

Tom Lake