ASUS P5W DH - Problems + Fixes Thread

[Dabrin]

wauw...... 300 pages of P5W owners..... i feel like i have gone to heaven.

I have DESPERATELY been trying to find a solution for a USB problem i have had for...... the last two years (yes, yes - long time, and yes, i am a bit embarrassed that i still did not solve it).

I am running the 2004 BIOS (did not really have a reason to upgrade, and to be honest, i am a bit of a noob, and unlucky on top of that, so i always tend to mess up things when i try to "improve" them).

I originally thought my trouble had to do with unstable power supply, but i recently upgraded my old 350watt to a 650wat corsair, and yet the problem keeps on haunting me.

I got a e6400 running at stock speed, and i got 4x512 kingstons.

And something is really, really weird with my USB ports.

Sometimes they work, and then they suddenly stops working. And it does not matter if i use the ports on the board, or the ones on the front of my case.

Keyboard and mouse works fine. no trouble at all. webcam works perfect, never a glitch.

But external harddisks (with own power supply), will suddenly disappear in the middle of reading/Writing.

USB memory sticks will sometimes work, and other times i will be told i have to format, or the media is corrupt. If i then switch the stick to another computer, it will work right away - without any trouble.

My Ipod is only very, very rarely able to update more than a few songs, before i am told it is corrupt, and i need to re-install the software on it (and when i try doing this - it fails, and i have to re-format on another computer). However, if i just disconnect the ipod, without trying to re-install the software, it will work fine, and even play the songs that managed to get transfered before my ports goes wonky.

Finally i noticed that the onboard wifi is also acting the same way. And i actually noticed that the wifi ALWAYS works when i switch on my computer. And as long as i can see the wifi is working..... all the other stuff i mentioned will work fine too.

Now - i think i have found out the wifi is actually working on the USB ports, so i guess it is not the WIFI to blame for all my trouble, but more the wifi that suffers under the same illness. So i normally end up using the wifi as an indicator to see if it pays off trying to upload some songs on my ipod or not.

I even tried using an external USB hub that was running with its own power supply (because i thought the connection broke down, because the ports were not able to pull enough juice) - but alas, my computer did not even recognize the hub, and i just ended up getting the "one of your USB devices have malfunctioned"/unkown USB device error.

So........ what the heck can make the USB ports work just fine the first 10 minutes i switch my computer on? and then stop working when it gets hot?

(sorry for the long explanation - but it is a rather strange problem, and a bit difficult to explain or troubleshoot, since it seems like it's coming and going.....)

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forgot to add - i am running XP 32bit (not Vista).
And the USB ports seems to always work within the first 5 minutes when i switch my computer on. But if they stop working, and i do a restart, they do NOT start working again. Unless i let the computer power totally down, and stand for a few minutes, before i switch it back on.