AlanHo Posted December 10, 2007 Report Share Posted December 10, 2007 My Vista computer has 4 USB2 ports on the Motherboard rear panel, 2 USB2 ports on the front of the case and 4 USB2 ports on a card in one of the rear slots.Volkswagen recently sent me an advert for a new car model in the form of a video stored on a 120 MB USB Flash Drive. I watched the film then decided to reformat the flash drive to be able to use it for other purposes.I put it into one of the front USB ports and FAT formatted it using Explorer. The result was a drive with zero files and zero free space. I tried to re-format it again to recover the free space but got an error message stating that the drive could not be formatted.This reminded me that my sat-nav, for some reason, cannot be found by the Garmin software when plugged into one of the front USB ports. I have to use one of the ports on the USB card at the rear. Hence I tried to format the USB Flash Drive when plugged into one of these ports. Explorer could see the drive and show that it had zero files and zero free space - but cannot format it.I then free'd up one of the motherboard ports (currently used by a scanner) and plugged the Flash Drive in there. This time Explorer formatted the drive without hesitation which can now be used in the ports on the card and on the front of the case with no problems.It would appear that the front USB ports and to a lesser extent the ports on the card at the rear are not fully compatible with all USB devices. Only the ports on the motherboard carry this distinction.What is going on here...? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andsome Posted December 10, 2007 Report Share Posted December 10, 2007 Funny that. I too have four ports on the back and two on the front. They all get regular use. :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rong Posted December 10, 2007 Report Share Posted December 10, 2007 Is there anything else that tells you that the ports are slow or any other messages, I have a USB Flash Drive and got a message once to say that I had faster drives on my computer. I don't think it has happened with anything else, this is my front USB ports, which I also plug in my external hard drive. I ignored it as I only have USB2 on my motherboard, on my motherboard the front and back (4 USB2 ports on a card in one of the rear slots) run from two plugs right next to each other so I wouldn't think their can be any difference between them. The only thing I can think that may be different is the amount of power that goes to the ones attached to the motherboard (not clever enough to know this though). Did you try a reboot to see if that cleared it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlanHo Posted December 10, 2007 Author Report Share Posted December 10, 2007 Yes there are some other clues - thinking about it - I cannot connect my motorola mobile to the front ports to synchronise my address book with Outlook - but from the rear ports it is fine connected to the card or motherboard sockets. Furthermore, my scanner will only work properly if connected to a motherboard socket.It all points to the fact that only the motherboard ports are robust - the others tend to be frail and behave differently depending on what is plugged into them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rong Posted December 10, 2007 Report Share Posted December 10, 2007 You could go into the case (not psychically, well only your hand) and check that they are pushed in well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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