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All USB Ports Died - Acer Laptop

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All USB Ports Died - Acer Laptop

I'm hoping someone can help me out. All of the USB ports on my wife's Acer laptop suddenly stopped working midday today. The laptop is about 4 years old and is sufficient for her needs so replacing it isn't really necessary. I've tried restarting, updating drivers, deleting and reinstalling the drivers, deleting the USB host controllers, updating Windows, etc. I'm not tech savvy at all so this was all done via searching online. Nothing has worked and I'm at a loss. Any ideas?

If the USB controller (hardware) is dead, is it a relatively straightforward, and hopefully inexpensive fix?
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what does device manager say about the hubs?
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Device manager indicated everything is fine.
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If you (carefully) pen the computer, one of the ribbon connectors pretty much connects the USB ports (3 on the Aspire series). You could check if there is a physical problem.

Also, plug in a portable drive and see if it is giving power?
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I've seen this happen once before, on a neighbors laptop. It was a HP Pavilion series laptop made for the VISTA era (2007). Not quite sure how they did their interface, but the traces ran along with the webcam in the HP. When the USB ports stopped working the webcam/mic did not work at all either. (I know this sounds bogus, but it's true). The USB ports and webcam/mic must have shared the same lanes on the motherboard. It was signs of a failing motherboard though. That particular Vista Pavilion manged to have a PCMCIA slot on it, so I ordered a USB PCMCIA card from Amazon, one similar to this https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Car ... Src=detail installed the card for her and boom the laptop had 2 working USB ports.

Needless to say, the webcam/mic and onboard USB's never worked and the laptop completely died less then a year later.

Just to mention, I did tons of troubleshooting, even backing everything up and formatting the laptop, and no errors in Device Manager. Everything said it was working fine. OP, this is tied into the motherboard. I would recommend doing a backup of everything on that computer.

Once you back up, if you want try a factory restore and see if the ports work again. If not. Then I would say its time for a new machine. Unless you have a voltmeter, soldering iron, solder, spare parts and tons of time to search for traces and take it apart, its much cheaper to buy a new one. No fixing that.

I'm wishing its a simple fix for you there and I can delete this post, but doesn't sounds good when all USB's just stop out of the blue.
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i wonder if the bios options would have a section to toggle usb speeds or to outright disable the ports and see if that has any effect
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badOne wrote: i wonder if the bios options would have a section to toggle usb speeds or to outright disable the ports and see if that has any effect
I remember on older machines yes, but on new machines doubtful. There is usually only a legacy option or auto. Device manager will continue to say everything is OK, when it's clearly not.
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maybe one of your device is shorting all the ports out
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The only USB devices that ever get plugged in are a Microsoft wireless mouse (usually leave the dongle in at all times), an HP laser printer, a PNY USB thumb drive that gets used once per week, and finally a Seagate external hard drive. Incidentally, the Seagate drive doesn't power up when plugged in anymore.
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The laptop has 2 x standard USB ports and 1 x USB 3.0, would they be wired together internally as all are not working.
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Gee wrote: USB 3.0 would not be wired together with USB 2.0. Different controller.
Okay, so it's unlikely then that two controllers died at the same time, so it's got to be the software, right? I'll uninstall all the drivers again and see what happens.
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The_Professor wrote: Okay, so it's unlikely then that two controllers died at the same time, so it's got to be the software, right? I'll uninstall all the drivers again and see what happens.
Did you try taking the battery out?

On some older desktops, the usb ports will disable if too much usb current is drawn. The way to renable is to turn off the power supply fully (unplug or the hardwired on/off switch).
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l69norm wrote: Did you try taking the battery out?

On some older desktops, the usb ports will disable if too much usb current is drawn. The way to renable is to turn off the power supply fully (unplug or the hardwired on/off switch).
I did not try that but will when I get home later this afternoon. Thanks!
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The_Professor wrote: I did not try that but will when I get home later this afternoon. Thanks!
I know @l69norm meant laptop, but when you pull the battery, hold down the power button on the laptop to clear all discharge. Hold it down for a minute, do the 1 Mississippi counts x 60 if you're not sure, then replace battery.

Best of luck
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The_Professor wrote: I did not try that but will when I get home later this afternoon. Thanks!
He meant to say laptop, but when you remove the battery, hold down the power button on the laptop for at least 1 minute, do the Mississippi counts to let it discharge and then replace the battery and see where it goes from there. Wish you the best of luck, but if not, backup to cloud or pull the HDD to be safe

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