Alienware 17r1. Problems with usb ports.

So something really weird is going on. I replaced the motherboard in my system and noticed that randomly my usb ports won't work. Sometimes they all work sometimes it's just a few that work. I thought I had a bad daughter board and I replaced it and it did the same stuff. I then put in another motherboard to test if it was hardware or software and the exact same stuff is happening. I don't normally use windows 10 so I reinstalled to see if it was a corrupted version and same issues after reloading drivers. All drivers are installed and otherwise the laptop functions normally but both my right side ports have power but wont register anything plugged into them and my top left port functions normally while my bottom left port does not show power or register anything plugged into it. If anyone has any input please let me know. It is random when it happens but I have not been able to get all usb ports to function at the same time. There must be a driver conflict with windows 10 but I am having trouble with it. I disabled selective usb port sleep in the power options already and it made no difference. Thanks for any help.

 

Hi Eepo,

That's a really weird one - I'm running Win10 build 1803 fully updated (using stock usb drivers) and have no problems. Could you maybe boot off something like an Ubuntu live usb stick just to see if that os is ok? Other than that all I can suggest is a cmos reset.

Javers

 

I don't have much experience with ubuntu. I'm not sure what's going on with the os. I am unable to boot from a usb drive in my bios because it's set to full uefi and doesn't give me an option to do so. If I set it to load legacy rom option It may keep me from booting on this card as it needs to run in full uefi mode to work. I have a spare 765m at home but I won't be there for a bit. Is it normal to not be able to load from a usb stick in full uefi? It seems to me I've always been able to do it before.

 

Yeh full / pure UEFI can only boot GPT partitions so I expect your usb stick is currently MBR. I'd recommend using the Rufus tool for making bootable usb sticks from .iso files as you can choose the partition type during format.

Javers

 

I'll give it a shot. It's a really weird thing. Everything else works perfectly.

 

Power options set "High Performance" and then disable "USB selective suspend..."

Device manager -> disable "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power"

 

I don't have a power management option in my device manager.

 

Still having this weird issue. It's persisted through 3 motherboard swaps, 2 daughterboard swaps and 2 power plug swaps. For the most part my right two usb drives work normally i just have to make sure there is something plugged into them at boot and my top left usb drive works but my bottom left one will not work no matter what i do. I have swapped out my cpu my gpus and battery as well as fans trying to track down this short and so far have been unable to locate it. I doubt this is a windows 10 issue since the drive does not power on in bios at all. I removed the disk drives once to check and make sure it wasnt a short in the connector and it does not seem to be the problem.

Next i am going to swap in a completely different screen and remove my ram to see if maybe there is some hardware issue I can not track down. Ive replaced the sd card board and the entire palm rest in an attempt to locate this damn gremlin and still no luck. This is just the craziest thing. Surely someone out there has some insight. I think my laptop is possessed

 

Typical Alienware build quality problems that persisted from 2013 onwards....between your USB problems, alienware 18 mosfet failure, random keys failing on 15R3, overheating from the factory, hard to recommend alienware any longer.

 

To be fair the laptop works perfectly except for the usb port. And it was a sudden issue that seems to have nothing to do with my motherboard according to sense. Quality doesn't seem to be the issue. This laptop is 5 years old and has a 1070 in it as well as an unlocked quad core processor that runs rock solid at 4.3ghz. It is hands down my favorite laptop. I have a 7820hk gtx 1080 15r3 that can barely keep up and i like less. I think its taking vengenace on me for blowing up my previous gtx 1070 inside it while mining ethereum 6 months ago like an idiot.

 

It’s a driver issue .... I remember when I did a fresh install and all the ports was working. When I proceed to install “ drivers “ for the laptop , it stopped working. If I remembered correctly , the driver name was something like “ USB 3.0 extensible blah blah blah “.... and it killed the USB port. So in my experience , it’s a driver issue.

Try to find a usb driver and install it and see what happens.

 

I have tried 4 different drivers. Its never been fixed by any of them. Also my drivers show to be installed correctly