worthless POS special deals....

[hisamishness.livejournal.com]

Went to Frys with the Girl to get my birthday present.
Came home with a fancy case & power supply, other nifty bits, and the Fry's bundled Quadcore Intel.

I'm building it up. I plug in the new external HD I've backed up my data to.
What message do I see?

NO HIGH SPEED USB PORTS AVAILABLE ON THIS COMPUTER!! The board is ready for a quad core processor, but no high speed USB! What a crock of shit!

* Crock of Shit = ECS G31T-M mobo

Even after installing the board INF and other drivers, it still gives me that damn "this device could work faster if" when I plug in an external drive. I've just downloaded the latest from ECS, but can't install till the second drive completes its format.

Any recommendations of what board I should replace this useless piece of crap with? I just hate that I have to spend even more on this thing...  (not a "help me please IT gods" post)

God, but I hate tech some days.
(usually it takes a vaio to get me this cranked)

Comments

[hopefulnebula]

(god I loved that last sentence. Vaios are disgusting evil creatures and must all be destroyed.)

(edit: SENTENCE, dammit, why can't I write today?)

[twfarlan.livejournal.com]

I'm conflicted.

See, on the one hand, I want to flame you until you're Cajun-blackened for asking this question in this forum, since we aren't here to answer support questions.

On the other hand, I want to comiserate about how f'ing awful Fry's is, whether it be their lousy return policies or their completely ignorant floor staff.

I just can't decide.

[polarbee.livejournal.com]

Eh, obviously not really a luser so I don't think it counts.

[ihateemo.livejournal.com]

He's a regular contributor to the forum. The unwritten rule seems to be that members who have proven to not need schooling can ask intelligent questions. :)

[jecook]

Besides, I can vouch for him here.

[hisamishness.livejournal.com]

Thanks. :-)

This was more rant than please help me IT gods.

[canray.livejournal.com]

And we know the Unwritten rules are harder to break than the written ones!

[hisamishness.livejournal.com]

Yeah - I can see your issue. I also have a conflict, as I'm hungry and just about anything with cajun spices sounds good, even my own posterior. :-)

I'm also not fawning at the desk of the IT gods -- just asking what others are doing.

[twfarlan.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Cajun-style butt steak does sound darned tasty.

Yeah, commiseration it is. I notice several other comments have been made regarding possible solutions; I hope some of them helped. One in particular, I've seen crop up more than once in otherwise-unrelated issues, lately: avoid the front USB ports or any daughterboarded USB ports for anything that requires 2.0. On these ECS boards, you should have either two or four ports that are directly mounted to the mobo; I'm sure you've tried them by now and I'd hope they work. If not, I'm almost afraid to suggest checking the support website as it is nearly useless for things like this.

I, too, have bought CPU/mobo bundles from Fry's in the past, and those bundle deals included ECS boards. Just to show you how truly high-quality they and Fry's support were, my wife and I bought the exact same pieces, from the tower down to the cabling, to build two identical systems. Mine worked, her's didn't, and her symptoms included everything from intermittent USB access to intermittent DVD access. Her system would work just long enough and throw symptoms just randomly enough that it took us a month to have the time and the wherewithal to track down the source: the mobo itself, which had in its twitchy death throes hosed the CPU. Was Fry's helpful at all in resolving this issue? If it tells you anything, we were able to get a brand new CPU shipped directly to us by AMD, and an upgrade at that since the chip we'd bought was not in stock, before Fry's got around to admitting that we were owed a refund on the board. No, by the way, we didn't end up buying the replacement board from Fry's.

As for specific boards to replace it with, I can't recommend any maker in particular at the moment. I would say to avoid anything with a RealTek chipset, and if you find an on-board nVidia security component (ECS boards had both for a while), disable it at the earliest opportunity.

My advice, and this goes out to everyone, is to buy exactly nothing from Fry's more complex than a book, and if you're wise, you'll make sure all the pages are there before you leave.

[hisamishness.livejournal.com]

Yeah - they sell crap... but they give you such good deals on it!

:-)

[twfarlan.livejournal.com]

This is like saying that while the hooker did end up giving you a scalding case of VD, she did at least give you a flat rate rather than charging by the hour.

[hisamishness.livejournal.com]

Well, we ARE talking about Frys... and I guess an ECS board could be compared to a social scourge...

[polarbee.livejournal.com]

I'm too far out of my computer building days to make a recommendation but what the hell. How do you even find a motherboard now lacking USB 2.0?
I didn't think that was physically possible.

Idiotic question of the moment. Were you plugging it into a front USB? Try a rear one. Occasionally front USBs can register as 1.1. I saw it a few times, but never bothered to track down the cause.

[canray.livejournal.com]

Probably all the different types of those stupid connectors on overly thin wires in order to get the Front USBs to work.

Whereas the rear USBs are connected right to the Mo-Bo.

[polarbee.livejournal.com]

Makes sense. I knew the rear ones were trustworthy because of the direct connection. Since it tended to depend on the case, the overly thin wire reason makes perfect sense. I saw some really crappy cases.

[blackrat.livejournal.com]

Ouch.

And as for vaios? ...*shudder* Only ever had the misfortune of having to sort one out *once* - that was quite enough.

[squigit.livejournal.com]

Make sure you've got the right drivers installed. On my last board it registered as 1.1 til appropriate drivera were added.

[photosinensis.livejournal.com]

I was about to flame. Then I noticed that you're legit, and have contributed actual stories in the past. Therefore, I'll let it slide this time, but you should really know better.

If you're using WinXP, you'll always get this error. This is because there are no USB 2.0 drivers for WinXP that are any good. If you're getting this on Vista, we'll chalk it up to a bug in that piece of shit.

Use the Force Linux, Luke. It shall take this problem away.

Not the latest, but...

[ptomblin-lj.livejournal.com]

I built a computer in August, and I used a Intel DQ965GFEKR motherboard. It has 6 USB 2.0 ports, 2 Firewire 400, 10/100/1000 Ethernet, Serial, Parallel, and 6 SATA-II.

[uchikikun.livejournal.com]

Was it one of those crappy ECS motherboards? Did you install the drivers?

I'm happy with my Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L.

[hisamishness.livejournal.com]

Yep - POS ECS board (should really edit the post to add this)
ECS G31T-M

[uchikikun.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've read nothing but bad things about those ECS boards. Whenever Fry's sells them in a combo like that, you're probably better off selling the ECS and using the money to offset the price of a decent board.

[hisamishness.livejournal.com]

That was the sales guy's thought too. Silly me thought I could run it for a while while I look into what board to replace it with. I never thought that I might be contemplating another drive out before they close to buy another the next day.

[toxico.livejournal.com]

I use a now-older ASUS P5n32-SLI Premium Wi/Fi. I don't think it's made anymore, but it supports Core 2 Quad and Extreme (running a Q6600 currently) and has room for everything I need. I'll probably replace it with its successor (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131164) at some point, because my video card and its cooling solution take up five slots and still leaves me a PCI slot at the bottom.

I agree about the drivers; see if you can download uopdated ones from the mfg as well.

[compwizrd.livejournal.com]

go into the bios, change the USB setting from FullSpeed to HiSpeed.
I see this a lot on ASUS boards, especially after a bios upgrade.

[jecook]

Oy, what board was that, so I can avoid it?

(is currently speccing out the next machine once I get the credit cards paid down)

[hisamishness.livejournal.com]

ECS G31T-M

[hisamishness.livejournal.com]

Bargain Basement board. I would not have purchased it if a $299 processor didn't come with it for $278. Now, I'm wondering if I should have re-thought that...

[jecook]

Ah.

Oddly enough, I'm running an ECS board on the current desktop. while it works, it's.... a bit on the sluggish side.

The next iteration is getting an Asus or something similar *points at latest personal post*

[syberghost.livejournal.com]

You should replace that board with better research skills.

[hisamishness.livejournal.com]

If it wasn't part of a non-negotiable bundle I wouldn't own it.

[hisamishness.livejournal.com]

It has USB -- just not what I can identify as High Speed USB2. I'm still trying to convince the OS that these ports are high speed -- just have to wait for the HD format to finish.

[compwizrd.livejournal.com]

http://www.planetamd64.com/index.php?s=2ec4e87edcf11d1978458d040422feca&showtopic=35023&pid=326917&st=0&#entry326917

Good old PC-Chips (ECS) strikes again...

[hisamishness.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... Downgrade BIOS to upgrade USB... It kind'a makes sense in a reverse-bizarro kind of way... I'll try that after my drive gets formatted.

Thanks for the link.

[toxico.livejournal.com]

On the opposite end of this specific spectrum, one guy got them to work by updating the BIOS: http://forums.techpowerup.com/archive/index.php/t-45832.html

[hisamishness.livejournal.com]

I went back and downgraded to the BIOS listed in the previous answer. One entry listed itself as USB2 just like in the second link. I upgraded it to the current BIOS level and just that one controller shows up as USB2. Uninstalling the others and rebooting brought back the same issue. Maybe if I get a PS2 mouse so I can uninstall ALL my items at once...???

In other news, when I plugged the transfer drive in, it was added at full speed and a 200g data copy was going at a good clip. I plugged a flash drive into another port to see if that one would give me a "slow" error... and I suddenly got a delayed write failure on my copy. Grrrr....

A buddy sent me links to a few boards at newegg. I suspect I'll be owning/running one of them by this time next week.

[canray.livejournal.com]

It am makes sense to Bizarro-World Tech Support!

[random-c.livejournal.com]

Eh, no specific recommendations as I've gone over to the shiny white side, but if I were building another PC, I'd go for an Asus board every time, if only because the failures I've had with them have generally been non-catastrophic. One fried its IDE when I forgot to turn on the aircon in the shed, but it's been running happily from the SATA for over a year.

[thecrazyfinn.livejournal.com]

Bonus for cheap Asus stuff? All HP desktops use Asus OEM boards. I've built a couple low-budget screamers this way. IE Buy bargain-basement HP system for $300, stick real CPU, Video, RAM, HDD in, strip crap out of the OS install, get good system with a decent quality case and OEM windows for the cost of a decent case and OEM windows. So basicly a free MB, some free RAM and a free smallish HDD.

[hisamishness.livejournal.com]

That could be a nice plan - but only if I could find one with XP. I'm on a Vista laptop right now and I want nothing to do with it on my own computers.

[kallell.livejournal.com]

OK I have had more then one board that wouldnt register under windows as 2.0 til SP2 was installed.

[hisamishness.livejournal.com]

slipstreamed XP sp2 install cd.
(we're very, very sneaky like that)

[kallell.livejournal.com]

yeah, i made one of those recently myself

[110billion.livejournal.com]

Hold on, wtf...

8x USB 2.0 (4 on Back Panel) (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/G31T-M)

[110billion.livejournal.com]

Oh, right (http://community.livejournal.com/techsupport/1607578.html?thread=16434586#t16434586). This is why I go Gigabyte or don't bother.

[lightforce.livejournal.com]

On the recommendation of friends whose hardware knowledge dwarfs my own (and from personal experience), I won't touch any motherboard that isn't Asus, Abit, Gigabyte, or MSI.

danger will robinson

[vxo.livejournal.com]

ECS = ECS EliteGroup = PC CHIPS!!!

Yes, this PCChips (http://www.redhill.net.au/b/b-bad.html). (What that article fails to mention is that IRQ3 on those is floating.)

I've had two systems with ECS boards; both checked out unceremoniously with no visible signs of component failure. They just ceased the fuck to be.

The latter of them was an Athlon 64 board, and died when plugging in a flash drive. Buh...

Re: danger will robinson

[vxo.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, check the BIOS settings.. at least one system I have has a "Hi-Speed" / "Full Speed" usb controller option in the This Is Where You Go To Screw Up Your Advanced Chipset Settings menu.