Windows SOLVED End of tether time

Evenin' all!

That's a more chipper intro than I feel like proffering. I'm chucking this under the Windows banner because I couldn't find a suitable hardware option, but I don't know whether it's my multi-reader itself that's playing up or some other Windows tomfoolery.

The only thing I can think of that might have caused this issue is me now deciding to hibernate (mostly) or sleep my PC when not in use in order to save electric/the environment/noise at bedtime. Anyway, after several cycles of said snoozing, I now find I can't read my USB stick or SD card through the front panel reader. Indeed, Dev Mgr says this:



I've spent pretty much this whole afternoon trying to find a solution online and am not in possession of anything more clue-y.

It's a standard multi-card plus USB 3.0 effort, connected by cable to the USB 3 header on an Asus Maximus IV Extreme-Z. I've disabled all the USB power saving options (as far as I know); I've unplugged/replugged it whilst uninstalling it in Dev Mgr and rebooting; I've turned off Fast Boot; I've uninstalled and rediscovered all root hubs in Dev Mgr; I've tried reinstalling drivers both automatically and manually (using the Browse Computer -> Pick from list of available stuff on my machine option); I have no idea where to go externally to download a new copy of whatever driver is supposedly appropriate and I'm very cross because this was working fine yesterday.

I also tried the Windows Troubleshooter, but have no option to even run hardware troubleshooting:



So now what? Buy a new reader? Or is it the board - is there a diagnostic way of checking whether the USB header is working (not sure I have much else I can plug into it internally)? Anything else I can try?

Appreciate any input as always - cheers team!

 

Are the port provided by the chipset or a 3rd party controller.

If the latter you might have to disable ASPM [Active State Power Management] for PCI-E too.


I had an issue with an on-baord wifi card where if it went to sleep [either if you put the device to sleep, or set the power plan to power save] it wouldn't come back on if ASPM was turn on.

 

Ah, cheers bud! That was an awesomely fast response. I'll dig about on the Asus site and see where the drivers come from - I thought they were chipset, so drivers should still be up on Asus, otherwise I'll have the install disc somewhere. I'll have a look for ASPM too just in case, but that sounds a lot like it might be in BIOS? If so, I'll have to hunt for it next time I reboot (after the current digital chores are done).

Appreciated

 

You can disable it in bios and/or by disabling it in windows' power settings...

 

Right - ASPM was already off for the power plan I'm using, but I've turned both it and the USB ones off for the other two unused plans as well, just in case there was any sort of daft cross-referencing going on. Just noticed as well I'm randomly losing GB of disk space each time I boot from sleep - I've gone from 45GB down to 41GB after a Windows update and sleep, then now down to 39GB after last night's doze. I assume that some part of the disk is given over to storing the system state for quick resume (although thought this was more when hibernating), but why isn't it being cleared on wake if this is indeed where the space is being used?

Seems the USB drivers were ASMedia, so I pulled the only available ones from the Asus site:


and ran the setup after extraction, only to get this cryptic error:



So that appears to be possibly part of the issue. Any idea how to remedy a missing host controller?

EDIT: Dev Mgr seems to disagree with both the presence of a USB 3 host and possibly also who it's made by:



EDIT 2: On a whim, I decided to try and manually install the drivers via Dev Mgr from the extracted folder, but using the "I have disk" option and browsing through to the more obvious-looking folders gives these options:



The driver update dialog(ue) boxes are looking for *.inf files, so I tried the top "hub3" one and the update then gave me these options to choose from:



Just off-screen are "Generic SuperSpeed USB Hub" and "Generic USB Hub", but what's of note is that those drivers are all ASMedia host controller drivers (as expected), rather than the Renesas one listed in Dev Mgr. That one looks like it might be Microsoft-signed and thus I assume runs the chipset-based USB ports (on the back panel?).

Given the board only has USB3 ports on the back panel, am I at risk of disabling those by forcing the ASMedia driver onto this failing Unknown USB Device, where there should be some sort of Renesas driver (which I don't have)? It seems the Renesas host in Dev Mgr is fine and unrelated, the Unknown USB Device is of unknown make (clearly) and doesn't work any more and the ASMedia host can't be found (or doesn't exist) but I do have drivers for it.

I think I'm confusing myself now.

 

For what it's worth last time I saw Device Descriptor Request Failed it was actually that the device had failed, not a driver/usb issue.

 

Okay, cheers bud - probably worth a shot. I'll see if I've got another card reader or otherwise internally-connected device I can test the header with.

 

A long shot. Pull the internal header connection and the power out of the back. Leave it 5 minutes and then retry it. I did once have a very weird issue much like what you're experiencing on a client computer.

 

....aaaaand the noiz has it! Mate, might have been a long shot, but you've clearly been practising at the range. If you can't get work as a sniper, you should find a job in IT

That seems to have done the trick and it's back up and running - any idea why this happens? Is it to do with sleeping the machine or some other gremlin? Regardless, that's saved some digging around for front panel devices or spending money needlessly on new ones, not to mention time spent banging one's head off the problem. Very much appreciated indeed. Thanks also @wolfticket and @RedFlames for chipping in - grateful for all suggestions received

Now that I've got the side off, I think I may as well give it a little hoov...

 

As long as it's fixed...

 

Bit late to this. I can't remember where I got this info from but it's worked so far for me when I'm having problems with USB hubs especially when drives disappear.

Switch off the PC and unplug the power cord. Hold down the PC Power On button for around 30 seconds then reconnect the power and reboot. Drives that have gone missing or other USB glitches disappear. I've never know how or why this works but it has so far.

 

No worries - all options welcome in anticipation of future frustrations...cheers bud!

In fairness, I think that's an extra step on the noiz solution, or at least is very similar. I've heard holding down the power button discharges the capacitors or something, so maybe this resets whatever bug is sitting in whatever memory function on the board that governs USB, like how it seems to remember drive names when you plug into the same/different ports. It does annoy me that half this stuff is still a mystery, even to us here but like RedFlames said, sometimes you get to the stage where you just want it fixed and CBA kicking things any further to find out why the machine spirits have been winding you up.

Which does bring me to another issue I have with the same machine...I will create a separate post for that one...