random failure of USB ports

I am suffering repeated random failures of USB ports on Vista Business.

The failures are not hardware problems - I have two banks of USB ports (one
PCI card, and another bunch of ports built into the PC) - and the failures
occur on both banks. It is never the entire bank - usually just one or two
ports stop working on one of the banks. It is not related to the hardware
plugged into the ports - it is entirely random.

Does anybody have any clues about what could be going on?

I would start by looking for an updated MB driver for the USB ports.
Possible removing the USB root from device manager and let it reinstall.

"Ric" <> wrote in message
news:76ABAF2D-3BB8-4D7F-A203-...
>I am suffering repeated random failures of USB ports on Vista Business.
>
> The failures are not hardware problems - I have two banks of USB ports
> (one PCI card, and another bunch of ports built into the PC) - and the
> failures occur on both banks. It is never the entire bank - usually just
> one or two ports stop working on one of the banks. It is not related to
> the hardware plugged into the ports - it is entirely random.
>
> Does anybody have any clues about what could be going on?

It does seem to be something to do with the USB drivers. Sometimes the root
hub drivers fail, soemtimes the device itself. WHenever I get everything
working by reinstalling drivers, something else fails.

After doing some googling on this, it seems that Vista has a lot of problems
with USB drivers. SUrely they should have fixed major bugs like this by now?

"Ric" <> wrote in message
news:76ABAF2D-3BB8-4D7F-A203-...
>I am suffering repeated random failures of USB ports on Vista Business.
>
> The failures are not hardware problems - I have two banks of USB ports
> (one PCI card, and another bunch of ports built into the PC) - and the
> failures occur on both banks. It is never the entire bank - usually just
> one or two ports stop working on one of the banks. It is not related to
> the hardware plugged into the ports - it is entirely random.
>
> Does anybody have any clues about what could be going on?

There's a USB fix for Vista that's not installed from regular Microsoft
Updates.
It will be included in SP1 but you can get it now.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/941600

Tom Lake