Why do these sometimes not work? Sometimes I have to plug something into a different port to get it to work. I had a miserable time this evening with my USB-powered modem this evening, and Internet access.
My PC has USB2 and USB3 ports. I have found that when I plug a USB2 peripheral in either they work just fine (at USB2 speeds of course). But if I plug a USB3 peripheral in the USB3 ports they don’t work at all. They do, however, work if they’re plugged into my USB2 ports (also at USB2 speeds, of course). Which means I don’t have the benefits of USB3 at all.
I can’t figure out what’s going on.
How old is the PC? There were some older PCs that had USB 1.1 in the front and 2.0 in the back. Also there were some PCs that had USB 2.0 front and back; however, the ports on the front of the PC had less power going to them. That could make some things, like external hard drives, not work correctly.
I’ve had USB external powered hubs not work with some devices.
I recently installed a USB 3.0 4-port card on my home PC and it’s worked great with everything especially my USB 3.0 external hard drive.