front usb doesn't work in win7

[Eva_Unit_0]

I've come across a very bizarre problem on one of my rigs. Here's the specs:

MSI P4M890M-L (basic 775 mobo, via chipset)
E2140
2GB DDRII-667
Radeon X850XT-PE
Sound Blaster Audigy
Samsung 640GB

In XP, the front usb ports work fine. On a linux livecd they also work. In Windows 7, they do not. They do nothing at all--they don't even seem to provide power to usb devices in win7. It's very strange. I just booted a gentoo livecd like 5 minutes ago and I could read a flash drive just fine. I just booted into win7, and the lights on the drive don't even come on. The back usb ports work fine, even in win7.

It appears as though all of the usb controllers are showing up fine in the device manager. There are no unknown devices. I tried to install the latest vista chipset drivers from via, but the installer bailed out saying that it couldn't find the appropriate files.

The front ports on this case are, I believe, only usb 1.1. I thought this could perhaps be an issue, but I just did a test install of win7 on an old laptop of mine which only has usb 1.1 ports and they worked fine. So win7 doesn't seem to have any inherent issues with usb 1.1 ports.

Does anyone have any ideas? What could possibly cause the front ports to selectively stop working only in win7?

 

[bigdogchris]

Check to see if you have a BIOS update available.

 

[Eva_Unit_0]

I upgraded the system to the latest BIOS but nothing has changed. I just don't get it, why would this happen just in win7? It's kind of a deal killer for win7 on this machine. All the back usb ports are usually full so having the front ones not work is a real pain. Next I guess I'll try manually installing the drivers from via.

 

[Eva_Unit_0]

Sorry to necro this thread but I have an update that others may find helpful.

I had initially chalked this issue up to a bug in the win7 rc. However, I recently put win7 rtm on this machine and, to my dismay, the issue was still present. On a whim, I did the following:

1. unplug the front usb usb cable from the mobo header
2. boot all the way into windows and then shut it down again
3. hook up the cable to the same header again
4. boot up windows again

And they magically worked. I have no idea why that would fix it. As far as I'm aware, the OS should have no way of telling which controllers actually have ports hooked up to them. But whatever, its fixed, so if anyone has a similar problem, give this a shot.

 

[bigdogchris]

I used to have to do that with Windows 98.