USB port issue/headphones

[roccenstein]

I have two USB ports on the front of my PC and up until recently I've always used one or the other for my USB headphones.  For no apparent reason now, my headphones will not work in either of the two front ports.  First theory?  Headphones are bad, but I tried them in one of the ports on the rear of th PC and they still work.  When I plug them in to the front port, the power light on the headphone cable comes on, but there is no sound.  Second theory?  The front USB ports are bad, however, I've ruled that out as well, as my flash drives work fine in both of them (I can see them and read/write files to them).  Any suggestions as to what could be causing this or how to fix it?

[roccenstein]

Anyone?

[truenorth]

Without the knowledge of your particular sound card it is difficult to try to ascertain what the problem might be. However should it be the one mentioned in the following answer from another forum this could be your problem/solution.truenorth

titan Apr 29, 2009 1:03am BST
If you followed all the advice above and still cant find a cure, I might have another suggestion for you.

1. First be sure that you are not sharing ports in the front and back. The green port in the back is the same port thats used as a headphone in the front. The same goes for the pink microphone jack. So be sure only ONE of these (either the front or the back) is in use.
2. If no sound comes from the front jacks, go into "Reaklek HD Audio Manager" and in the "Audio I/O" tab click the little wrench button next to the word "Analog."
3. In this setting, CHECK "Disable Front Panel Jack Detection."
4. Click OK and suddenly you should be hearing audio and recording with your mic from the front jacks.
This does not relate to USB ports but it may still have relevance.

[rthompson80819]

It sounds like a current problem, and for what ever reason the headphones are not getting enough current to power the speakers.  The fact that they worked before probably means one of the contacts is either corroded or dirty.

It's not uncommon for front USB ports to have less current output than the rear ports.  Check your computers specs to see if that's true, although that may be hard to find that spec.

[truenorth]

Another suggestion that has just occurred to me as a possible solution is to go into device manager and disable all the USB controllers and restart the computer. That should automatically reinstall the drivers for the USB ports and correct any existing problems created by corrupted usb drivers.truenorth

[Allan]

USB ports don't have drivers. The chipset driver enables the ports and you don't uninstall any driver by "disabling" (or even uninstalling) the hardware from within device manager.

[soybean]

From Device Manager, Windows 7:

[Allan]

Soybean -  Nice post. Do you understand it? USB drivers are part of all recent operating systems. Once the chipset driver is installed the OS will recognize the chip and activate the USB driver. Have you ever had to install a driver for your built-in USB port?

[truenorth]

What soybean relates to in his post is what my research also found. It did not make mention of "chipset" drivers only the USB host controllers. That being said i do agree that i have never personally installed USB host controller drivers and was relying on information gleaned from another forum on the subject after the thought had occurred to me to look into what could cause the issue and thought of it possibly being a driver issue. It seemed to have been confirmed there. I certainly bow to the more advanced knowledge that others may bring to the subject. truenorth

[BC_Programmer]

First:

USB drivers are part of the OS. you don't need to install separate drivers. Unless the USB has some set of extra features, or it is something like a composite USB device (with something that doesn't have built in drivers), in which case the drivers are part of those installed with the chipset.

There is clearly some confusion over what a chipset is and does and therefore what the drivers are for. the chipset involves all the various IO chips on the motherboard. Not surprisingly, this includes the components responsible for USB connectivity. For Windows XP, sometimes if you don't install the chipset driver, XP will only use it as a USB 1.1 device/root hub, until you install the chipset drivers.

Yes. There <are> drivers. But that is clearly a case of pedanticism, since judging from context Allan meant that USB doesn't <need> separate drivers- like you need usually for video cards, sound cards, and so forth. Floppy drives have drivers too, but nobody goes on the internet looking for the fastest one, because there simply isn't one. Once you have the proper driver for the hardware, assuming there are no awful bugs in it, your hardware is pretty much already being used to the fullest extent. It's like people who think a newer video driver can make their MX2 able to support Pixel shader 2. Utter nonsense perpetuated by youtube videos where people play games released last year on vintage pentium PCs by "usin tweaks lol".

Truenorth: your suggestion to "disable" was close; the common tact is to uninstall them, and have the machine redetect them when it restarts. This doesn't change the driver itself- it is still the same, but the registry information and various other settings will usually revert to their defaults.

[Allan]

I thought I said all that. Well okay, may not ALL that. I said it in 30 words or less 

[deebrie]

I had some problems with my usb ports on the front of my computer before and when I updated my usb drivers the problem went away.
I hope this helps.

deebrie