Your advice would be greatly appreciated.

I recently assembled a new PC (based on an MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum, Rev. 2). It has four standard USB ports and two USB plugs so you can expand it to a total of eight USB ports. At first I plugged in only two extra USB ports using the L-bracket that comes with the mobo.

All is well. I can plug my Sandisk Cruzer micro 512Mb USB memory stick and it is recognised by the XP Pro (+SP2) and the drive mapped. I map the drive letter to Z: to prevent any conflicts with future mapped drives.

However, I had reason to open the case again (to shin etsu the nForce chip and put an NV5 cooler onto my 6800GT) so I thought I'd conect the two case-front USB ports to save me crawling under the table every time I want to use the USB memory stick.

However, in the front port the USB memory stick was recognised as "unknown USB device" and fails to be mapped as a drive. I know the front USB ports are working fine as I can connect my digital camera to them and download pictures, plus the USB memory stick still works if I use the rear USB ports. If I look at Device Manager while the USB memory stick is plugged in to the front USB ports, it is shown as "unknown USB device" and there are no errors or conflicts showing.

Any ideas?

System bios setting, perhaps. I had to enable USB storage to all ports with one setting on my board's bios. Perhaps yours requires separate enabling for the cable-run (I assume) USBs you have in front. Might also be jumper enabled (disabled in this case). Finally, the cable connection to the board might be reversed; easy to do during installation, but I doubt it since the other USB devices work fine.

My own board is a joy to work with when it comes to those little cable connections; they are close enough to the board-mounted power switch that I'm sure to accidently power up at least once every time I do any kind of re-wire!

As vmann cited check that you have enabled all USB ports in your BIOS, and it is easy to miss-wire to the mobo so double check that as well.

btw: it's rare, but possible, for a port to go bad. One of my case front ports died awhile ago and I now get a similar "not recognized."

One solution is to get a USB extension cable for one of the rear ports. That's how I plug in my Cruzer mini.

Another issue:
Many mobos have separate USB 1.1 and 2.0 jacks. You may get "6 USB ports", but 4 will be 2.0 and 2 will be 1.1. The ones you're using for the front may be 1.1.
If your BIOS says USB (1.1 + 2.0) or something like that in the BIOS, then that's what you have.


The Jedi Master

USB 2.0 is backwardly compatible to USB 1.1 so that shouldn't be an issue.

Yeah, lots of things in computers "should" be, but aren't. I've given up asking why!


The Jedi Master

I'm with the B-man on this one; my stick is works fine on USB 1.1 or 1.0 ports (office computer), just a bit slower (says the little XP god who lives there).

I have Asus A7N8X mobo, and have a similar problem.
I have PNY and Memorex usb keys and neither one of them works when plugged into the front usb port.
However, my Saitek x36 works through the front usb ports.

Andrew.

Ah, now this I know about--I also have the A7N8X mobo. I've got a Creative Muvo that works just fine on the front ports (never tried the rear).
I guess the main question is how did you hook them up?
My case has a bundle of single connectors for the USB cables. Unlike the rear connector that came with the mobo, which was in a 2x5 connector with one corner plugged, I had to manually plug in each of the 8 wires (2x red, white, green, black) to the USB header on the mobo. I paid close attention to the 2x5 connector's layout when I plugged it in and I've had no trouble with it.


The Jedi Master

Again, check your USB mobo connections. It's easy to misinterpret the individual line connector orientations. And some mobo manufacturers don't use the standard naming conventions, which makes it even more tricky. This May Help

Thanks for the suggestions. Yes I had to plug in each individual connector, but I double checked that I did it correctly, and I don't think this could be the problem since the USB port works fine for my digital camera.

On another forum, someone has suggested uninstalling the entire systems USB and then reinstalling but I'm unsure how to do that and afraid it may pork my system.

The search goes on...

Go into your Device Manager and delete all the references to USB hubs and USB root hubs. Reboot. They should be reinstalled automatically when they are detected as new hardware. If not, reinstall your chipset driver.

I rewired my USB ports just in case I had it wrong before, but no change.
I unsinstalled all my USB stuff in Device manager. It reinstalled on reboot, but still no good.
The USB memory stick continues to work fine in any other USB port except my front two. It looks OK, except Windows can't find any drivers for it.

I wonder how I can find force windows to install the USBTOR.SYS drivers?