[Jon3Hall]

Hello my USB ports have failed me. They still have power but no longer recognize USB devices. I have reinstalled drivers and even done a clean install of vista, 5 times, to no avail. So I have come to the conclusion It is my mobo. I have recently upgraded to windows vista premium 64 bit from vista home 32 bit. The reason I say this is because I want to swap out my mobo. I want to do a direct swap,change the old mobo for the same exact one, so that there is as liitle room for complications as possible. My mother board is a MCP73M01H1 (Napa) and came with my HP pavillion a6300f. What do I need to know before i swap out the old mobo for a replacement one? Can i just swap them and thats it or is there more to it? Also I have a MSI r6870 hawk. Should I run my video through this during initial install of my mobo or wait till everthing is set up. I know it has not been a problem when clean installing Vista. Thank you for any help.

[coastie65]

Jon3Hall, on 20 April 2012 - 10:01 AM, said:

Hello my USB ports have failed me. They still have power but no longer recognize USB devices. I have reinstalled drivers and even done a clean install of vista, 5 times, to no avail. So I have come to the conclusion It is my mobo. I have recently upgraded to windows vista premium 64 bit from vista home 32 bit. The reason I say this is because I want to swap out my mobo. I want to do a direct swap,change the old mobo for the same exact one, so that there is as liitle room for complications as possible. My mother board is a MCP73M01H1 (Napa) and came with my HP pavillion a6300f. What do I need to know before i swap out the old mobo for a replacement one? Can i just swap them and thats it or is there more to it? Also I have a MSI r6870 hawk. Should I run my video through this during initial install of my mobo or wait till everthing is set up. I know it has not been a problem when clean installing Vista. Thank you for any help.

Hi and welcome to the forums. First, I have removed your other post as one is sufficient and it does no good to post twice. That having been said, there should be no complications in a direct swap, if it is the same motherboard. Because of the hardware signature the problem comes in when you use a completely different motherboard, as then the OEM operating System sees it as another PC and will not authorize it. If it was a retail copy of Windows, it wouldn't be a problem. Getting ready to do the same thing with a laptop I inherited from my Brother-in-Law when he decide he didn't want to replace the motherboard.

[LiveBrianD]

Jon3Hall, on 20 April 2012 - 10:01 AM, said:

Hello my USB ports have failed me. They still have power but no longer recognize USB devices. I have reinstalled drivers and even done a clean install of vista, 5 times, to no avail. So I have come to the conclusion It is my mobo. I have recently upgraded to windows vista premium 64 bit from vista home 32 bit. The reason I say this is because I want to swap out my mobo. I want to do a direct swap,change the old mobo for the same exact one, so that there is as liitle room for complications as possible. My mother board is a MCP73M01H1 (Napa) and came with my HP pavillion a6300f. What do I need to know before i swap out the old mobo for a replacement one? Can i just swap them and thats it or is there more to it? Also I have a MSI r6870 hawk. Should I run my video through this during initial install of my mobo or wait till everthing is set up. I know it has not been a problem when clean installing Vista. Thank you for any help.

If you're getting the exact same board, you just put it in, with the same ram, GPU (if you have a dedicated one), etc as before. Yes, as coastie said, Windows activation might be an issue. (note: I've found that sometimes you can get it to work on another PC just by going to the windows activation wizard and typing in the key that's on the side of the PC again. That's how I got a dell copy of XP running on a non-Dell! It also worked on another dell with no issues whatsoever, I didn't even have to type in the key again.)

[Jon3Hall]

Jon3Hall, on 20 April 2012 - 10:01 AM, said:

Hello my USB ports have failed me. They still have power but no longer recognize USB devices. I have reinstalled drivers and even done a clean install of vista, 5 times, to no avail. So I have come to the conclusion It is my mobo. I have recently upgraded to windows vista premium 64 bit from vista home 32 bit. The reason I say this is because I want to swap out my mobo. I want to do a direct swap,change the old mobo for the same exact one, so that there is as liitle room for complications as possible. My mother board is a MCP73M01H1 (Napa) and came with my HP pavillion a6300f. What do I need to know before i swap out the old mobo for a replacement one? Can i just swap them and thats it or is there more to it? Also I have a MSI r6870 hawk. Should I run my video through this during initial install of my mobo or wait till everthing is set up. I know it has not been a problem when clean installing Vista. Thank you for any help.

Thank you for the answer. Sorry about the double post.

[Jon3Hall]

LiveBrianD, on 20 April 2012 - 02:34 PM, said:

Jon3Hall, on 20 April 2012 - 10:01 AM, said:

Hello my USB ports have failed me. They still have power but no longer recognize USB devices. I have reinstalled drivers and even done a clean install of vista, 5 times, to no avail. So I have come to the conclusion It is my mobo. I have recently upgraded to windows vista premium 64 bit from vista home 32 bit. The reason I say this is because I want to swap out my mobo. I want to do a direct swap,change the old mobo for the same exact one, so that there is as liitle room for complications as possible. My mother board is a MCP73M01H1 (Napa) and came with my HP pavillion a6300f. What do I need to know before i swap out the old mobo for a replacement one? Can i just swap them and thats it or is there more to it? Also I have a MSI r6870 hawk. Should I run my video through this during initial install of my mobo or wait till everthing is set up. I know it has not been a problem when clean installing Vista. Thank you for any help.

If you're getting the exact same board, you just put it in, with the same ram, GPU (if you have a dedicated one), etc as before. Yes, as coastie said, Windows activation might be an issue. (note: I've found that sometimes you can get it to work on another PC just by going to the windows activation wizard and typing in the key that's on the side of the PC again. That's how I got a dell copy of XP running on a non-Dell! It also worked on another dell with no issues whatsoever, I didn't even have to type in the key again.)

edit I have read on other forums you have to call Microsoft to get it activated. Is that true?

This post has been edited by Jon3Hall: 20 April 2012 - 04:48 PM

[LiveBrianD]

You might need to. If you do, just explain the situation, and they'll probably activate it for you.

[Jon3Hall]

So I wanted to follow up on my problem. So the usb ports are working once again. I went to the local computer shop and asked the guys what they thought about my problem. One of their answers was to take the mobo out and run it out of the case to see if there was a ground problem. Well I had taken the mobo out when I realized that most of my cables were to short to connect to the mobo out of the case so I canceled the project. However, when I put everything back together the usb ports were now working. YEAH!!!!!! So I have no idea what I did but it worked. Does anyone know why this worked? I am very curious. Thanks. Now time to go race.
;-)

[LiveBrianD]

Yeah, I suppose there could've been a grounding or shorting problem there. Perhaps a cable was touching the case or you had a motherboard standoff in the wrong place?

[coastie65]

Hi Coulod have been a grounding issue as mentioned, maybe you hooked something differently the second time ( which was probably the correct way ). It cpuld be any number of things that got corrected when you did that.

[Jon3Hall]

coastie65, on 23 April 2012 - 01:20 PM, said:

Hi Coulod have been a grounding issue as mentioned, maybe you hooked something differently the second time ( which was probably the correct way ). It cpuld be any number of things that got corrected when you did that.

I had never taken out the motherboard before this. Also the only things I had unplugged before was the power aupply to motherboard cables. The problem occured when I tried to change bad ram. I must have tweaked something then because I have a small case with a big graphics card, which I should have taken out to change the ram and not forced anything. Thanks for the responses. Out of four pc forums this was the only one to respond. Thanks again.