Page 4 - Repeated USB Failure on MSI 865 MB's

I just installed an MSI 865PE Neo2-v board with a Pentium 4 3.0g chip. Thanks for the heads-up on the USB. I'll have to keep an eye out for this issue. I don't really plug devices in and out but this would have driven me crazy if I hadn't read your posts. I hope MSI or Intel actually admits there is a problem and does something about this.

Nice to finally find others with same problem. I built two PCs using the ASUS P4P800E with the 865PE chipset. Identical cases also. Mine blew the southbridge after a month of using my Sony Digital Camera on the front panel USB port. I wondered if it was the case, cables, or M/B. I received a replacement and all is well. The second PC, given to my brother, blew the southbridge yesterday while using the same camera and USB port. Received a replacement and all is well.

This clearly is a bad lot of chipsets from Intel, and has nothing to do with the M/B, as the USB controller is built into the design. Somewhere I read, maybe this thread, the safe thing to do is use a dedicated USB Powered controller to isolate the M/B from any high inrush currents that could be causing the chip to fail.

I worry, now about the Firewire port, as someone reported that also caused the chip to fail, although I'm not certain that the southbridge handles that interface. BTW, my SATA drives stopped being seen. I had to remove my 300G Maxtor on IDE4 (SATA2) to get the system to boot (W2K on SATA1, IDE3).

GLTA

The motherboards that come back from RMA are not affected by the USB causing the chipset to blow. MSI's solution was to put some sort of voltage regulation design right ontop of the USB connector on the motherboard. Looks odd...but it works. If I get around to it I'll post a picture of the modification the manuf. used.

I just find it rediculous the lack of information and industry support here. Everyone by now knows that this issue exists. I have yet to see a press release from Intel about this yet.

-Christien

im a medium sized dealer in the southwest. we carry mostly gigabyte & asus. i've been selling the 865 based boards since 2003. in 2003 i never saw this condition occur. in 2004 near the end of the year i had two machines w/ this problem (client reports machine shuts down after usb device is connected, never posts or sometimes never powers after that). in jan I had 5 machines w/ this problem and every month since usb devices are killing more and more of the 865s. its getting epidemic for us. i notice a 'wetspot' on the southbridge when this happens, always in the same spot. additionally i have seen this occur on 865 based boards running the intel 775 processors. my question is has anyone seen this occur when usb is plugged into the BACK ports rather than the front ports that connect the case leads to usb heads on the board itself? ive started NOT connecting the front usb hookups on the 865 chipsets to see if that will minimize the occurs of dead machines resulting from this condition, but so far dont have any results. also, are there any OFFICIAL releases from intel or any mainboard manuf'rs discussing this problem. Like the others here, i am totally surprised at how little info i can find on the internet about this issue. I have been replacing the boards effected by this for my clients, but its causing a serious workload issue in my shop.
thanks ahead of time.....

Welcome to my world. I've been dealing with this for quite some time. Yes the "Wet" spot is most deffinately noticable. A lot of MSI's motherboards have some sticker on the southbridge so when it blows you get this little bubble under the sticker. I've had both the rear and front USBs cause the failure. It seems to happen most with Digital Still Cameras and Flash Drives. The first batch of motherboards I got back from MSI with the defective southbridge had some design modifications. They had moved the front USB connector to one of the alternate locations on the board (I think there are 3 possible places on the 865PE Neo2). and put a small circut board down ontop of the pins. This did not solve the problem. THe southbridge still blew. The 2nd revision I've seen come out of MSI's labs has this little standoff 1 inch high flimsy little unit that you plug your front USB into and in-turn plug into the motherboard. I have yet to have a failure on this method. MSI actually put a little piece of paper describing the USB failure and their fix into the box with the refurb board. I lost the darn piece of paper or I would of quoted it here. Bottom line...I smell a class action lawsuit against Intel on this one. There are 10s of thousands of affected customers and shops. It's will be interested to see how long it takes for the laywers to tear this up....

-Christien

Hello,

Can somebody confirm for me if the board is completely dead after this USB/Southbridge failure? I'm building a system for my friend and he purchased the MSI board you are talking about. Straight out of the box, it is competely unresponsive. I noticed a bubble on the Southbridge sticker as was described in the forum. I'm just trying to confirm if the board should be RMA'd...thanks for any feedback!

-Jim

If you have a blown southbridge you need to RMA it back to MSI. 3 year warranty on all their products. I can only imagine how much this is hurting their back pocket right now...

Yeah, you definately want to RMA that bad boy. You might want to give the supplier the URL for this thread so they can see what's been going on with this chipset.

If your friend wants to continue to use this series board, he can hedge his bet by using a dedicated USB Powered controller to isolate the M/B from any loading that could cause the fail.

Thanks all for the heads up. If he can't get a full refund and then get an Abit, I'll look into the dedicated USB hub option.

-Jim

And another one here i think.

I just purchased an asus p4p800-mx board and new h.d,ram,cpu and when i set it up it all worked fine for about 2 hours.
Then the usb kept locking up the system when i inserted any usb device but this started with a 256 meg stick so current draw should be minimum.
I was unsure whether the problem was hardware or software so i reformatted and reinstalled xp but the problem was still there.After playing around and trying to update the bios(thats another problem) then usb port started to work again but now when i plug a usb 2 device in i get the message that i have plugged into a non hi speed usb hub.
Does this sound like hardware issues or if its software then where can i get the drivers.The asus c.d that have all the drivers does not have the usb drivers as they say they are in xp but they didn't seem to have installed and now how do i install them without reformating.I tried to do a update driver but i get the answer that the drivers are not later than is installed.
Sorry for my simplicity here guys as i know the basics but i am no tech.
Cheers.

Back again

Just a question and again i appologise for my lack of p.c knowledge but where i got my motherboard from is about a 3 hour drive for myself and as i don't want to be without my p.c again by sending the board back,would a quick fix be by purchasing a pci card with usb ports on it fix the problem.
Do these boards give the full usb2 data transfer of that of the built in type and can the motherboard handle having another couple of usb ports.Even if all 8 on board are dead 2 or 4 ports are enough for my requirements.

I realise this is a shorcut cut with an extra expence but by the time i either drive or mail the board back its going to cost me either way.
And if it is hardware who is to say the next board won't do the same.
Only thing i have overseen in the board though was the 3 pci slots were enough at the time,one for a future sound card,one for a future video card and the last is being used by my modem so now i would have to leave one of these out.

Nicka, it does sound like your problem is driver-related rather than the hardware issue we are talking about here. I haven't seen anyone implicate the 865GV chipset yet, but more importantly, you seem to have some sort of USB functionality, and this flaw so far has been killing the USB ports period.

Try booting your system up in safe mode and allowing only the USB drivers to enable, see if you get any functionality that way... if it works better, then there may be a driver conflict somewhere.

What OS are you using? Any service packs?

Dngrsone
Thanks for the prompt reply.
I am running xp with no service pack.
Wow what a relief to me when i read it sounds like software and not hardware but sometimes a hardware fix can be easier than sitting here for days on end trying to work out software issues.
I cannot understand though how i could get these two problems.
Firstly the usb would not work at all and it would lock up the system after about 10 seconds and this happened several times.And secondly the usb just started working but it will not run usb2 mode.
I am wondering now that it is working that do i reformat again and maybe the drivers will pick it up this time.
How do i reboot into safe mode and run just the usb drivers.

Or is there anyway that i can manually install the drivers.
And again sorry for my lack of p.c knowledge but i guess thats what makes these forums tick.

P.S.

Here is the error i am getting when i plug a usb2 device in.
The usb composite device will function at reduced speed.You must add a high speed host controller to this computer to obtain maximum performance.

Thanks in advance.
Nicka

Safe mode is the base OS without extra drivers turned on. So what you can do is find the USB drivers and start them up while you are in safe mode and try to use the USB. If you are getting the same errors with USB drivers only running then you may indeed have a hardware problem, or the drivers are corrupted somehow.

Dngrsone
Thanks again.
My appologies for spamming this thread with my lack of knowledge but heres where i am stuck.
Where do i get to safe mode.
If i go to the start menu i only get the option to log off or turn off the computer and there is no safe mode.
Also i don't have the usb2 drivers which i think now is where the problem rises.
The motherboard c.d does not come with xp usb2 drivers and that it sais that xp comes with the drivers but they don't seem to work or they are not there.
Now i don't know if this is right or not but just reading another thread on another forum and i read that usb2 drivers are not in xp pro v2002 and that you need sp1 to upgrade.Could this be right and if so then there lies my problem.
The usb ports are working fine now but they will not run at the usb2 rate and as i need to run a usb2 device for my video camera input for video editing.
Thanks again
Nicka