Sorry to post off-topic, but this one has me stumped. Has anybody else had a USB port just fail on them?
I have three 3.0 USB ports on my laptop, which is a Lenovo 3.15 Ideapad, still reasonably new (less than two years). Last night I was moving round files, and left an external SSD plugged in when I took a nap for a few hours. (It's a WD MyBook, Easy Store or whatever: I have a lot of these WD drives, all similar but slightly different.)
A couple hours later, when I got up again, my laptop was almost frozen, could only manage to get the screensaver to wake up, but couldn't get into my system at all. The SSD light was blinking; after an hour of trying to wake up the machine using mouse and keyboard, I gave up, did a hard shut down.
When I restarted, everything worked fine, my SSD doesn't appear to be damaged; but the third USB port is not working now.
This is kind of crucial for how I work, because I have no working internal hard drive at the moment; my internal SSD died awhile back, I discussed it earlier on the list. So at present, I use USB port 1 for a small unpowered USB hub into which I insert flash drives. USB port 2 is the flash drive on which my working OS (Devuan Daedalus with most recent TDE stable upgrade), and then USB port 3 is reserved for those SSD drives. When I get busy, I have a BIG powered USB hub with enough ports to accomodate the whole neighborhood. But I don't like to drag it out all the time, for many reasons; mainly because I try to keep it simple and my desk uncluttered.
I could rearrange, use my powered USB hub to accomodate a new arrangement of devices, but it seems to me that a USB port ought not to just stop working. I have tried other SSDs, other connectors, as well as trying flash drives and other USB gadgets, but nothing works on this USB port.
Is there any way to resurrect my seemingly dead USB port? Or can I replace parts and put in a new 3.0 USB port, etc.?
Any help will be appreciated. If there are web pages treating this subject, I haven't found them yet. I don't mind doing my own research, if I know where to look. I also don't mind spending a little to repair or replace, but would like to avoid buying yet another new machine so soon.
Bill
On Sat, 7 Dec 2024, William Morder via tde-users wrote:
When I restarted, everything worked fine, my SSD doesn't appear to be damaged; but the third USB port is not working now.
You did check in the bios to see if it was (somehow) disabled?
Jonesy
On Saturday 07 December 2024 09:49:34 Marvin Jones via tde-users wrote:
On Sat, 7 Dec 2024, William Morder via tde-users wrote:
When I restarted, everything worked fine, my SSD doesn't appear to be damaged; but the third USB port is not working now.
You did check in the bios to see if it was (somehow) disabled?
Jonesy
Didn't think of that, but I wonder how it could have been disabled in the bios if the system was running the whole time. When I woke up after a couple hours, the SSD was blinking, which I thought meant something was reading the drive, or something was being written, deleted, added ... but it would seem that it was just unmounted when the USB port stopped working.
Whenever I reboot, I'll go into the bios and look. I doubt it's possible, if I never went into the bios myself, but maybe I don't know everything.
Bill
On Saturday 07 December 2024 10:10:20 William Morder wrote:
On Saturday 07 December 2024 09:49:34 Marvin Jones via tde-users wrote:
On Sat, 7 Dec 2024, William Morder via tde-users wrote:
When I restarted, everything worked fine, my SSD doesn't appear to be damaged; but the third USB port is not working now.
You did check in the bios to see if it was (somehow) disabled?
Jonesy
Didn't think of that, but I wonder how it could have been disabled in the bios if the system was running the whole time. When I woke up after a couple hours, the SSD was blinking, which I thought meant something was reading the drive, or something was being written, deleted, added ... but it would seem that it was just unmounted when the USB port stopped working.
Whenever I reboot, I'll go into the bios and look. I doubt it's possible, if I never went into the bios myself, but maybe I don't know everything.
Bill
Oh, I just thought of something. I was wondering if I had done anything especially different recently (other than moving files around, etc.), and it occurs to me, yes.
I have an external Logitech keyboard and mouse, with one of those tiny receiver dongles that I plug into any unpowered Belkin USB 4-port hub. Otherwise I just use it for flash drives.
However ... I was doing some experiments with my smartphone, and discovered that I can use my external keyboard and mouse with my phone, which is useful for sending texts, because I refuse to use autocorrect crap.
Now, I wonder, could my switching the keyboard from my laptop to my phone, then back to the laptop, have caused something weird to happen?
Bill
Anno domini 2024 Sat, 7 Dec 13:38:07 -0800 William Morder via tde-users scripsit:
[...] Now, I wonder, could my switching the keyboard from my laptop to my phone, then back to the laptop, have caused something weird to happen?
Other than confusing your personal NSA supervisor? Not that I can think of.
Nik
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On Sunday 08 December 2024 04:50:17 Dr. Nikolaus Klepp via tde-users wrote:
Anno domini 2024 Sat, 7 Dec 13:38:07 -0800
William Morder via tde-users scripsit:
[...] Now, I wonder, could my switching the keyboard from my laptop to my phone, then back to the laptop, have caused something weird to happen?
Other than confusing your personal NSA supervisor? Not that I can think of.
Nik
At least it would give me some pleasure to know that I caused them so much trouble, to assign me a personal tracker.
Bill
On Sat, 7 Dec 2024 09:15:20 -0800 William Morder via tde-users users@trinitydesktop.org wrote:
Sorry to post off-topic, but this one has me stumped. Has anybody else had a USB port just fail on them?
Well, they're *ports*. They're subject to physical wear and tear. I believe there are clauses in the standard that say they have to be built so that they can support a certain minimum number of device insertions and removals before failure, but it's always possible that you got a dud or someone did a bad soldering job that failed under stress.
Before you go tearing into your laptop's guts, though, try booting it from a live CD image just to make absolutely sure that there's nothing "stuck on" in the installed OS somewhere. I don't see how there could be, but it's a simple non-invasive test that eliminates the OS layer as a possible culprit.
I assume you've tested the port with other devices to make sure it isn't the combination of that port and that device that's gone sour. I also assume you've tested your external drive with other ports on the laptop. (I ask because I have a USB key that suddenly started refusing to work with my laptop one day while my desktop shows it as perfectly okay. Still haven't figured that one out.)
E. Liddell
On Monday 09 December 2024 04:44:11 E. Liddell via tde-users wrote:
On Sat, 7 Dec 2024 09:15:20 -0800
Before you go tearing into your laptop's guts, though, try booting it from a live CD image just to make absolutely sure that there's nothing "stuck on" in the installed OS somewhere. I don't see how there could be, but it's a simple non-invasive test that eliminates the OS layer as a possible culprit.
I assume you've tested the port with other devices to make sure it isn't the combination of that port and that device that's gone sour. I also assume you've tested your external drive with other ports on the laptop. (I ask because I have a USB key that suddenly started refusing to work with my laptop one day while my desktop shows it as perfectly okay. Still haven't figured that one out.)
E. Liddell
That's a good idea. I probably wouldn't have thought to test it with a live image. And I do have a couple of discs here.
As far as wear-and-tear goes: Actually, I use that port the least of the three. The middle port I use every day, all the time, because it's where I insert the flash drive that currently holds my entire OS, since I don't have an internal hard drive.
The first, or front port, I use for an unpowered USB 4-port hub, which mainly holds the dongle, or receiver for my wireless keyboard. And then I insert other flash drives as I need them.
The last, or third port, I reserve just for my big SSD drives, or for a powered USB 13-port hub, if I intend to spread out and do some time-consuming work, usually when I am reinstalling packages, or if I am transferring files to or from backup on one of the larger SSDs.
Otherwise, I try to confine myself just to my laptop, and whatever I can fit on a collection of flash drives; mainly because this way it's portable, and I can pack up, come and go quickly. If I have all my gear out, it can take a while to organize and pack up. I am trying to get myself into good habits.
So it's especially a mystery while that last, or third port, would have somehow gone bad, as I use is much less often; although, when I do use it, it maybe gets more wear. Or maybe, because it's open, something could have got into it ... dust, insects? But I did open up that laptop already, and nothing appears to be amiss.
Well, later today I will run some tests.
Bill
On Mon, 9 Dec 2024 06:19:16 -0800 William Morder via tde-users users@trinitydesktop.org wrote:
As far as wear-and-tear goes: Actually, I use that port the least of the three. [...]
So it's especially a mystery while that last, or third port, would have somehow gone bad, as I use is much less often; although, when I do use it, it maybe gets more wear. Or maybe, because it's open, something could have got into it ... dust, insects? But I did open up that laptop already, and nothing appears to be amiss.
If it's something like a tiny dab of badly-applied solder on a surface-mount connector somewhere having failed under the stress of repeated heating-cooling cycles, it would be hard to spot just by looking. Factory defects happen, unfortunately.
Do check the contacts inside the port for excessive filth or physical damage if you haven't already, but it doesn't seem likely that that would make the port fail with a device already connected to it, unless something got jostled.
E. Liddell
On Monday 09 December 2024 11:02:27 E. Liddell via tde-users wrote:
On Mon, 9 Dec 2024 06:19:16 -0800
William Morder via tde-users users@trinitydesktop.org wrote:
If it's something like a tiny dab of badly-applied solder on a surface-mount connector somewhere having failed under the stress of repeated heating-cooling cycles, it would be hard to spot just by looking. Factory defects happen, unfortunately.
Do check the contacts inside the port for excessive filth or physical damage if you haven't already, but it doesn't seem likely that that would make the port fail with a device already connected to it, unless something got jostled.
E. Liddell
I keep my laptop and other important stuff much cleaner than my living space.
Regarding the problem in question, the mystery deepens; it has magically just gone away, or seems to have done.
First I tried booting from live images. I didn't have the standard Debian or other live discs here, but I did have a couple of homemade live DVDs, one by Nik and another of unknown provenance. They didn't do much beyond booting up, didn't actually get into the GUI, etc. So then I went back to my own custom Devuan OS with TDE installed.
Just for kicks, I tried inserting my flash drive into that problematic third USB port. This is the one I generally use for bigger SSDs, or even for my heavy-duty powered 13 port hub, if I need to use several external SSDs. (This flash drive *is* my complete operating system, as I don't have an internal hard drive at the moment.)
And bingo, no problem. My system booted up as usual, even though I was booting the flash drive from that third, formerly non-working, USB port. I tried one of my SSDs in the second port (which I generally use for the flash drive with my OS). Again, no problem, the SSD mounted as usual.
Then I shut down, switched back to my usual manner of working, booting from the flash drive inserted in my second port, and again, everything worked like normal. Then I tried my SSD in the third port, and again, it mounted normally, just as if nothing unusal had happened, as though the past few days never happened at all,
I don't have a clue why it stopped working, even after several reboots, then just started working normally again. About the only thing I can think is that it might be wise to switch round my ports, to use them for different things, rather than maybe overburdening one with heavier activity, then not using it at all.
My reason for using my ports like this is due to physical configuration: the unpowered USB hub that I use for my wireless receiver dongle, and for flash drives, has a kind of odd right angle kink, so that in effect I can only use it in the front port, or else I will block the other two. And I use the third or back port for larger SSDs or for my powered USB hub because I am less likely to jostle the middle port, where my running OS resides, and I don't want to disturb it.
Thanks for all the suggestions and help. I am not sure if anything actually worked to correct it, but at any rate I seem back to normal (whatever that is), at least for now.
Bill
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Dr. Nikolaus Klepp -
E. Liddell -
Marvin Jones -
William Morder