P8P67 Pro B3 - USB Issue

[StriperMike]

Well, I finally picked up my replacement motherboard from Microcenter this past weekend and put everything back to working order. Windows booted, asked to reactivate and I was on my way except for one weird issue which has not gone away.

After about an hour or 2 it appears that the USB ports (2.0 and 3.0) just completely stop working.

My symptoms are either that:

1. The mouse no longer glows red and the keyboard has no lights. I unplug them and plug them back in and there is no change in behavior.
2. Or the mouse and keyboard are lit up but will not respond to anything. Almost as if they are both locked up. I click and move the mouse and get nothing. I hit the numlock or caps lock and nothing.

My only option is to cold boot the machine to get them working again.

I have tried disabling the USB power saving settings in Windows 7 but that did not help. Ive unplugged my USB printer and had only the mouse and keyboard connected. Ive tried different ports (USB 2 and 3). All my drivers are up to date. This was all working fine with the old P8P67 Pro motherboard. I have even tried reinstalling Windows 7 on a spare drive and the same symptoms occur.

This has become extremely frustrating. I'm thinking there is either a problem with the B3 and latest BIOS or I have a defective board that I need to return to Microcenter.

Has anyone experienced this issue? Any ideas of what could be causing this. Funny, I wasn't having any issues with the old board but the new one has been nothing but trouble.

Please help!

Thanks,
Mike

 

[Prong]

Try reinstalling your drivers. I had to reinstall the sound and one other thing (can't remember now) to get everything functioning again on my Pro replacement.

 

[StriperMike]

Thanks for the tip. I actually experienced the same issue on a clean install on a spare drive I have. I'm not sure if a reinstall would help in my case.

 

[bankster55]

You could use MS brand KB/ mouse and load the MS drivers from CD

The fact its a flakey recognition prob over ALL ports could be connectors not making good contact - maybe spray a little contact cleaner while jamming in and out

Do you have ALL (legacy) USB enabled in bios?

 

[Zap]

Are you plugged into the black USB ports on the rear?

 

[StriperMike]

All Legacy USB is enabled in the BIOS (those are the default settings as well). They are plugged in to the USB 2.0 ports on the back (black). After experiencing the problem I even tried the USB 3.0 ports on the back. It happened again this morning where I had to cold reboot. Very frustrating considering I paid all this money to upgrade. I should have kept my old P8P67 Pro board since I wasn't having any issues.

Does Microcenter give you are hard time on returning motherboards that may be defective (aside from Intel admitted flawed boards)?

All my years of building boards I have never had an issue where the USB connection just turns off. Especially when the B2 revision USB was working just fine. I'm starting to believe I have a bad B3 revision. As much as I hate dealing with vendor tech support I may have to call Asus for this one.

 

[Zap]

Does Microcenter give you are hard time on returning motherboards that may be defective

I don't see why they should. Just make sure they have a replacement in-stock (check web site) and then bring it in for the exchange. You will need your receipt and everything the board came with (box/accessories).

 

[StriperMike]

I saw there is a later BIOS than the one I am currently running. I just upgraded to it today and am keeping my fingers crossed. Since this issue occurs everyday I should know fairly quickly if this BIOS fixes the issue. Even though there is no mention of a USB improvement in the BIOS description. Wait and see...

 

[you2]

Its interesting but someone had nearly this identical issue with the msi gd65 board. The odd thing is that like this all is fine when the system boots and then after a while the port seems to go dead (i've not experienced this issue with my gd65 but to be honest it only has about 10-15 hours of active use; been using the old sys quite a bit). I would be tempted to think it is a bios issue just on the basis of the transition from working to non working.

 

[StriperMike]

Well, the issue happened again and again I had to cold boot to get the ports back. As soon as Microcenter has more stock this board is going back for replacement! This is beyond frustrating. The USB ports just go dead. It hasn't happened while using the PC though. When the PC is sitting idle, normally overnight, it occurs. In this case it took all of approx 2hrs. All sleep is disabled on USB ports as well on the PC itself. It only goes to sleep if I put it into sleep mode. This case the machine is up and running. I ran out for a couple hours, came back and no mouse or keyboard lights. The only option is to cold boot the machine.

 

[StriperMike]

Just spoke to Asus tech support. The woman said if the BIOS is at the latest and greatest along with the chipset drives then the issue could be related to a bad capacitor or something on the board related to power for the USB to just shutoff.

Please Microcenter, get stock soooooon!!!

 

[bankster55]

Dunno if this is involved

 

[StriperMike]

The first two screens have already been performed. I upgraded to 1502 today. I will also confirm/upgrade to USB driver 2.0.4.0.

Its actually gotten worse since I upgraded to 1502. First time its shut down on me while using the computer.

 

[bankster55]

Actually I just pointed to the USB issue notes with 1502, but you really should use 1503 also in screenshot - latest official

There is also unofficial 1505 and 1506 on ASUS ftp

You could also change in the power option plans to performance and max out all the advanced settings

Might want to turn off powersave on both Intel and Realtek LAN

I have the deluxe and have had no such probs, but I have noticed with the Pro that hard to solve probs usually seem to clear up with a new board.

I am the last person to instantly RMA a mobo at the hint of trouble - I like to figure out whats wrong, but I think with the P67 ASUS series, I might make an exception.

Edit:
Just noticed you have the Intel SSD
This makes it mandatory that you try your system without the G2 to see what happens.
Or at least have latest RST drivers

 

[StriperMike]

Thanks for the responses Bankster. I've been able to replicate the problem on a fresh new Windows 7 install using a standard SATA drive. From the symptoms I am starting to believe this is not BIOS related. And from the lack of reports I am seeing I think this is an isolated incident related to my particular board. I have no setting enabled in the BIOS or in Windows that would trigger the USB ports to completely shut off (USB2 and 3). The entire system is new. Maybe I should switch to a Gigabyte GA-P67A-UD4-B3 instead of ASUS... Feature set seems to be on par on they are readily available at my local Microcenter.

 

[bankster55]

I think its basically your HW/BIOS interactions. I dont know if the pro has the TDP switch on the mobo, but if so, you can flip it up and cold boot twice and see if things work. The testing scheme will find a very good working O/C config for your RAM BIOS CPU and mobo, that may just solve your prob to the point you know its not the board. I would never install/use the AI Suite software until I knew the board was stable.

Just based on my internet cruising, i would say in order of reliability of the mobo itself would go like this:
Asrock extreme 4-6
Gigabyte UD4 - 7
Asus Deluxe
Asus Pro

Of course ASUS is the biggest mobo manuf in the world - 21.6 million last year, so theres lots more of them out there

Then again, the Z68 release has apparently been moved up to May, so you may wish to hold off.

 

[StriperMike]

Came across this post on one of the Asus forums. Apparently this is not an isolated incident. A lot of issues surrounding the P8P67 boards from what I am reading.

http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx...d_id=1&model=P8P67+PRO&page=1&SLanguage=en-us

I'm going to give this a try as a last resort. I really don't feel like tearing the PC down for a third time.

 

[bankster55]

Man, I know how you feel, been there many times.

You are def not alone with the prob.There are several general posts about the freezes on HF and there were specific posts also on the USB just going dead, which I believe was in the massive "latest updates" thread
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1597847
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1583213
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1578865

One must differentiate between "general" hard freeze probs and the "USB stops dead randomly for no reason" prob.

Dunno if you are willing to spend about $41 to eliminate ram as an issue for your board. I have found that a single 4GB stick of 1.5V 1333 SuperTalent DDR3 with micron chips will work stable on any P67 board in A2 slot. It may seem like a non related long shot, but RAM does appear to be involved in lots of these isuues, and the USB ports going dead is perhaps just a symptom, not an issue itself.
http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php...Talent-DDR3-1333-4GB-256x8-Micron-Chip-Memory
>Note I bought a bunch of the "Value" ST RAM @~$30 and GOT micron chips, but to be sure you have to spend $11 more.

Heres a new sandy bridge compliant memtest (for USB stick)
http://www.memtest.org/download/4.20/memtest86+-4.20.usb.installer.zip

And you can look in event viewer and also create a crash dump file at next freeze, if you make your Win settings correctly
.http://windows7forums.com/windows-7-support/39784-where-dump-files-dmp-saved-after-crash.html

 

[StriperMike]

Thanks Bankster! That is valuable information. I decided I am going to give it a little more time to figure it out. After reading some of those posts I made a few changes that have seemed to help others out.

1. Disabled the PLL overvoltage adjustment.
2. Disabled the C3 and C6 reporting
3. Changed profile from AUTO to XMP

Ill keep you posted.

 

[bankster55]

New info today also on this subject
ASUS has just recently shown vers 3.1 mobo specs (not 3.0) on support page.
Everyone wondered what the hell was a new revision coming out so soon after the B3, and it now appears that the NEC USB 3 chip has been replaced by the AsMedia unit (owned by ASUS)
The argument now is whether its to save money or to fix a problem
Interesting

http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1037120612&postcount=2231
http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1037120849&postcount=2232
http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1037121680&postcount=2234

FWIW I also noticed that my Deluxe replacement has a dif brand bios chip and a dif brand Zif socket. And frankly I must note I never even had a hint of USB problems, either B2 or B3, which seems to indicate is not a USB prob per se, rather a SYSTEM stoppage problem

 

[StriperMike]

That is an interesting bit of information. And if it is to fix a problem that is hardware related does that mean ASUS will be replacing 3.0 boards with 3.1 boards. Cant wait to see how that one shapes up.

So far the changes I have made resulted in no USB shutdown and no freezes. What really pisses me off about this whole thing is I didn't have a single issue with the first board. But because of the SATA issue I returned it for the B3 version. If the only reason for the Intel caused replacement was due to a faulty hardware component that could not be fixed via a BIOS update, then why the hell would someone like myself who didn't have issues prior all of the sudden have lockups on the new board. And the current workaround involves disabling options in the BIOS that I didn't have to disable before. How does a company like ASUS miss all of these things during QA before rolling it out to manufacturing? Are other 1155 boards (MSI, Gigabyte, etc) having these same issues with lock ups?

 

[Zap]

New info today also on this subject
ASUS has just recently shown vers 3.1 mobo specs (not 3.0) on support page.
Everyone wondered what the hell was a new revision coming out so soon after the B3, and it now appears that the NEC USB 3 chip has been replaced by the AsMedia unit (owned by ASUS)
The argument now is whether its to save money or to fix a problem

I just read this P67 motherboard roundup and it claimed that the Asus board had by far the slowest USB 3.0 performance, so maybe it was to fix that?

As the second most expensive board in our roundup, you'd expect the Asus P8P67 Deluxe ($240) to be one of the highest quality P67 motherboards available -- and that's partially true. To highlight its negatives, the P8P67 Deluxe struggles to match the P67 Extreme6 for value and its USB 3.0 ports had the worst write performance we recorded.

 

[jiffylube1024]

No problems here with USB 2.0 or USB 3.0 on a P8P67 Pro B3 with the stock version 1305 BIOS.

I've got 6 USB devices hooked up to USB 2.0 - no issues. I use two USB 3.0 hard drives as external portable storage between my desktop and laptop - no issues running at full USB 3.0 speed (I get a nice ~85MB/s copying to a 2.5" laptop drive in an enclosure ).

------

If you're overclocking - try setting everything to default settings. Update to the latest non-beta BIOS, and try reinstalling your chipset drivers and USB 3.0 drivers.

 

[StriperMike]

Jiffy, do you have C3 and C6 reporting enabled in the BIOS by any chance? Are you using XMP profile? Since I disabled them I have not had a lock up in days. Just curious.

 

[bankster55]

I already posted this in another thread here, but I think the USB going "dead" is just a symptom of memory errors that ultimately freeze the SYSTEM. It has nothing to do with USB. When you changed mobo you changed bios. The bios is going under constant revision to make it more memory friendly to more brands. However, since the P67 is extremely memory picky, as they make 10 more brands compatible, it may make a few worse.
Anyway, thats the conclusion I came to at this time.
If your RAM works and is stable, no USB probs
Clearly, the UEFI bios will not read the XMP profile in the SPD chip unless its SET to it. Some say even tho its set, they still have to manually enter all the parameters.
I might also mention that with the 1305 or1502 bios (cant remember) the C-states went from auto is "on" to auto is "off"