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Switched 2 cards, now half my USB's not working
Today I switched the location of 2 cards inmy system. Reason is that my sound card (SB X-Fi Fitality Champion) was behind my GPU (EVGA GTX460 SC 768Mb) and picked op some static at huge loads of the GPU, making the sound 'crack' for longer periods of time. So I exchanged it with my WiFi card, and with the SB at the bottom (far away from my GPU) and the sound is 100% crystal clear again (the main reason I bought this card in the 1st place).
But now the odd thing is that of my 4 USB hubs on my mainboard, 2 are no longer working anymore. I can plugin anything I want (memory sticks, my mobile phone, MP3 player or even HDD), they just don't respond at all. It's even weirder when I look at my Win7 hardware manager, that I see all 4 USB hubs listed as active.
An other weird thing is that one of the USB hubs used has carries a card-reader and 1 USB port. The card-reader is fully functioning, but the USB port on that same hub seems dead. An other USB hub holds 2 USB ports, and only 1 is responding as well. (both cases they're at the front of my PC).
The USB hubs at th back of my PC (directly connected from the mainboard) work fine. One holds my mouse, and the other my G11 keyboard and an external HDD, and all 3 function as they should
Anyone has any idea what's going on and how to make things working again? Right now I have only 1 active USB port at the front of my PC, and that one is at the bottom of the case.
Comments
From my A+ certification, circa 1998, I remember the following. Some of the card slots in your system are tied to specific IRQ addresses. There are multiple per card slot. However, if the cards you're putting in the card slot take up one of the IRQs that your onboard devices need, then the onboard devices will no longer work. Move the cards around and see if it changes anything.
This was useful information at that time (10 years ago) but I've never run into that issue since. You could have done something else too...nicked something or bent something in the process. I'd try moving the cards around some more to see if it fixes the USB.
** edit **
Before moving the cards around, make sure you've disabled all the onboard stuff you're not going to use, like the sound card.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I thought about the IRQ thing as well (and that came from my 20+ year PC experience, but I'm unable to move the cards around. The mainboard I'm using is an ASUS M4N72-E (see pic), and the slots I used are the 2 PCIe's
As you see in the picture, There's little to no moving around anymore there
I'm only not sure if I can change the IRQ used of the SB card. Older models (SB AWE32 to name a classic) had jumpers to change IRQ, but the one I hase is completely jumperless 
Hmmm. You can't really shield the sound card...probably a bad idea to wrap it in foil. Poke around in the BIOS, there may be an option to assign IRQ or something like that. There may also be something in the manual as well...it's usually full of nearly useless stuff until you run into something that shouldn't be happening, like an IRQ conflict. There may be specific instructions about the slots as well.
Did you disable the onboard soundcard?
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Go into your BIOS and look for PNP OS Installed and make sure it's set to Yes.
EDIT: Uhh, i'm not fully awake. I read the first reply that said he was A+ and melded that with your original post, but the summary may be enough for you if you have a modicum of PC knowledge and are more awake than I am. If it isn't I'll continue later after I eat and wake up fully.
EDIT 2: I just looked at the MB's description and it doesn't have on-board video thus negating most of what I said below and making it pretty much useless. Deleteing it and starting over after I wake up. Sorry.
He will find it pretty difficult to install anything without the video card in mate, modern systems will not even boot without one. That aside all he needs to do to check for an IRQ conflict is to open device manager and look, it will list any conflicts. I would be surprised if there are any as modern machines have IRQ sharing capabilities.
OP, you say it's the front USB's causing the problem. Physically check the pins on the mobo that they are connected to, you may have bent one when reconnecting the cable after installing the card. Secondly check the bios to make sure that everything is fine. You say that you are using the 2 PCI-e slots, so that would be one for the graphics card and one for the soundcard with the WI-FI taking up a standard PCI slot between them yes?
Yeah, I pretty much had a brain fart and deleted most of my post. I didn't read the board specs and see it didnt have a video subsystem. But sound cards can cause significant conflicts nowadays because of the automatic assigning of IRQs. It's still best to install them first if possible.
Forgot to mention. See that small white slot below the blue PCI-e slot? Thats a PCI-e x1 slot and intended for things like PCI-e soundcards, stick it in there.
I am using those 'small' slots for the SB and WiFi card (thought those were the PCI-e cards
). Also checked the cables of the front USB hubs, and they're just fine (didn't even touch them when switching the cards, but just incase, I checked them immediately after I found out they didn't work normally).
@NoQuarter - That was one of the 1st things that came to mind, and I set the PNP to YES, but no change though
@lizardbones - The SB is already shielded - check specs here (what else do you expect from a top-range soundcard?) Have to check the IRQ settingsin the BIOS, but I thought they were not there. All not used features are turned off as well (done long ago, and checked again earlier today)
I did not see if you have tried this, however I am sure you have....have you tried just removing the sound card and trying it out? Sound cards can cause wierd issues, they always have. I recently had a Soundblaster X-Fi card go "bad" and before I pulled it out I had all kinds of wierd issues. My sound was fine, then all of a sudden as I was playing a game my OS completely crashed, but I did not even get a blue screen. Computer would not even POST after that. For some odd reason I decided to yank out the sound card, computer post'ed and ran fine, just used the realtek onboard after that.
Excuse me if you have tried removing it, I just woke up :P If everything works after the card is removed, we can try to figure out why the card is causing the issue. Alternatively, you can try removing and reinstalling the sound drivers, can't hurt.
Here is some info about IRQ and IRQ sharing and troubleshooting:
http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=support.faq&ID=80d7b56e35ea51e73104295aec1f755b
Look at the bottom of the article for: "Moving PCI / PCI Express Cards"
On the picture of the mobo you supplied the Black & Blue slots are PCI-e x16 , the two white slots between them are PCI and the small white slot below the blue slot is PCI-e x1
If you are using the two white PCI slots and if the soundcard you posted is the right one then you have it in the wrong place. You posted a PCI-e soundcard and if this is the case then you should fit it into the very small PCI-e x1 slot.
Dunno what happened, but this morning when I turned on the PC, I gave those 2 'defective' USB ports an other try and they worked. I didn't change a thing in my config, so I'm really baffled what happened there.
Anyways, TY all for input and thinking along