P67 Pro3: Rear USB 3.0 ports not working anymore

[flash82]

Hello,

yesterday my computer suddenly froze unexpectedly. In all the time I've been using this hardware configuration based on the ASRock P67 Pro3, it was the first time this has happened.

After a system shutdown and cold boot, my USB mouse was not operational anymore. I therefore looked into the problem and soon found out, that the two rear USB 3.0 ports stopped working. The mouse only appeared dead because I had it randomly installed into one of the 3.0 ports.

By now I have tested all eight rear (6x 2.0, 2x 3.0) USB ports and two of the internal ones I've connected to my midi tower. Out of those ten ports, eight are working fine after having tested them with several USB devices. The only two not working are the USB 3.0, which I mostly use with an external hard-drive.

It looks very much like the extra USB 3.0 chip (Etron EJ168A) has picked up a defect, but is there anything I can do to confirm this further or to, possibly maybe, get it working again? Before I think about starting the RMA process with my retailer and be without my computer for weeks or maybe months, I thought I'd better ask here.

Thanks for your help,
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Re: P67 Pro3: Rear USB 3.0 ports not working anymore

The Etron chip might have died, things can happen suddenly on the tiny chips we use now.

Did you check Device Manager, the USB Controllers entry, just to see what it shows as the error? If the Etron driver was installed, then it should be identified as Etron among the other USB entries.

Were you using the XFast USB software? If so, uninstall it, reboot and see if those ports work again. Either way, uninstall the Etron driver, reboot and install it again and see what happens. You may get some indications about the health of the Etron chip when installing the driver, or in Device Manager.

Otherwise, nothing you can do to wake up that chip if it has gone bad. You could try shutting down the PC, turn off the PSU, pull the AC plug and let the PC sit for while, then reverse the process and see if it comes to life. If not, replacing the board is the only fix.

You could get a USB 3.0 card that goes into a PCI-E slot as a replacement.