I encountered a problem the last 2 weeks, which was quite annoying and I’d like to share it with you guys. The USB port, is quite the soul of the computer when it comes to transferring data to and fro from the latter. This port is quite small, and easily unnoticed. Due to this lack of attention, the poor port suffers a lot of damage and we curse the computer for not working well. Well, the problem lies elsewhere. Let’s find out what i faced.

Over the years, I’ve never used the port on the cabinet, which is an extension from the motherboard, to the front panel of the cabinet. This port usually lies covered with it’s panel, and no issues arise. A few days back, I was using my Wireless keyboard and mouse combo, and i saw a wierd error pop up at the bottom right, notification/status bar. The popup said that it found an unknown USB device. Which was weird, because all i had plugged in that time was a USB extension cable, which is basically a Female to Male USB cable coming from the back of the cabinet to the front, so that I need not have to bend and turn the cabinet all the way to the front to plugin a device. The other thing plugged in was the wireless receiver for the keyboard and mouse i mentioned earlier. I ignored the warning and continued with my work. After a few minutes of irritating popups, the computer finally froze and i had to reboot manually.

After restarting, to my relief, the popup didn’t reappear. But this relief was shortlived, the popup started appearing again and again, and once again, froze the computer. That really ticked me off. I decided to get to the bottom of this, so i put my thinking cap on and armed with my philips head screw driver, i dove in. I tried all the tricks in the book

• Disconnected the USB cables
• Checked for any interruptions in the cables
• Checked for any kind of electronic interference
• Checked the Motherboard, for any kind of wire-overlapping of any sort
• and finally, Disabled from the BIOS to check if the error came again

After disabling the USB ports from the BIOS, the notification popup, indeed stopped. But so did all of my USB ports! I had to use a PS/2 mouse and keyboard to fix this error. It was quite frustrating, since I couldn’t locate what was wrong. So I decided to hit up with Google regarding this. Epic fail results.. No one had even heard about such kind of rubbish before. Everyone had posts and threads about how their USB drives were not getting detected or how their USB ports had stopped working, but nothing similar to my problems. Thanks to that, I was left alone to solve this problem. I tried everything I could, which got me even more frustrated by each minute. Finally, giving up was the only alternative I could see, leaving me to disable the USB ports completely from the BIOS and be satisfied with the wired keyboard and mouse. If I had to use any external device, I had to go to the BIOS all over again and enable the USB ports, go back to the OS, use the device, pray all the while that the computer won’t freeze and remove it and shout OMG IT WORKED and restart the computer, disable and reboot. Yes, sounds extremely LAME, for a person who actually runs a Tech site!

So to pacify my utterly disgusted mood, I decided to give this one more go. I started from the basics. What CAUSES such problems? Can it be a faulty device? Can it be a faulty cable? Or is the motherboard on whack? What could be wrong? Could i get a PCI USB Addon card to solve this problem? Or should i just send in my motherboard for warranty replacement? Well, that was the last and most unappreciated option, since it takes 15 days to replace the motherboard! So, I stuck to the USB ports, since I never looked at them before, for I took for granted that the ports must be just fine. Looking closely, I saw a few dust particles sitting on top of the USB ports, which resides on my motherboard. Looking at which i remembered reading an article a long time back, that a few dust particles can easily cause the USB port to think that there’s a device sitting in that port and needs to be detected. I whacked my head with my palm and cleaned it out immediately with compressed air, and prayed to god again while booting up my computer. No go.. The same problem yet again!

No, I didn’t lose hope again, I looked around the cabinet if i was missing anything.. The worst of the problems are caused usually by the most insanely, ridiculously small stuff and can be repaired in less than a second. Similar was the case here. I noticed that my cabinet USB ports were nicely tucked away behind the panel, which i had never used in the past entire year. I thought to myself, is this really required?

The answer was quite obvious.. NO, I did NOT. So, I opened up my cabinet and removed the cable connecting the USB ports and the Headset/Microphone ports on the cabinet to the motherboard. The usb port was in a very bad state.. It was quite deterred and filled with dust. Looked something like this:

After removing the cable and restarting the PC with the USB ports enabled, I prayed and tested all the ports. Voila! It worked! And to think I was about to send the motherboard for warranty replacements! This scenario was to depict how easily we can lose our nerve while trying to troubleshoot and not realise what’s wrong. USB ports are quite useful and we take that port for granted. The cabinets and the motherboard manuafacturers, don’t take the time out of their busy schedule to design a cap or a cover for their USB ports, which would help avoid dust collection.

To avoid going through the agony i went through, you can follow these steps:

• Regularly [Weekly if extremely dusty surroundings, otherwise monthly] Open the side panel of the cabinet and clean out the dust and tie the cables lying around inside firmly yet gently, leaving maximum air flow towards the CPU and motherboard.
• Clean ALL of the ports on the back panel of the cabinet. First, be sure to remove all the cables and disconnect power to ensure safety. The cable ends should be cleaned as well, for example, a VGA connector is prone to collect dust as well.
• If you don’t use the extra ports, buttons which are provided on the cabinet, be sure to disconnect them from the motherboard.
• Use compressed air cans, to blast short pulses of air on the USB ports, since most of the dust particles are too small to the naked eye and won’t be easy to remove it out with a piece of cloth.
• Insert and remove USB plugs over and over again, regularly. This creates a bit of friction and keeps the ports alive, with again, the dust being expelled out.
• If you don’t use the ports much, apply duct tape over the ports to seal them off and remove the tape when you need to use it.
• Similarly, you can cover up the other ports such as the IEEE 1394 [Firewire ports] as well, to avoid problems in that area as well.

Hope these few basic, yet essential steps might help you in keeping your computer healthy and away from stupid errors like i had before. If you have any suggestions or queries, feel free to ask. Thanks.

For TechMirage,
Pranav Shirodkar