The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    USB Ethernet adapter kills USB 3.0 controllers

    Discussion in 'Windows OS and Software' started by pipspeak, Feb 11, 2014.

  1. pipspeak

    pipspeak Notebook Deity

    Reputations:
    94
    Messages:
    1,041
    Likes Received:
    55
    Trophy Points:
    66
    I'm hoping someone can point me the right direction to fix a weird USB 3.0 problem I'm having on a Thinkpad Yoga with Win8.1 x64.

    When I plug in an Asix 88179-based USB 3.0 ethernet adapter it works as it should. When I remove it, however, I lose all USB 3.0 function on all USB ports. No USB 3.0 device is recognized by Windows anymore (including the ethernet adapter, USB drives, flash drives etc.). Only USB 2.0 devices work.

    The ethernet adapter works fine on another Lenovo Win8.1 x64 machine I have (I can plug and unplug it forever with no problem). l uninstalled the Windows and Intel USB controllers on the Yoga (and let Windows reinstall them on restart) and the ethernet adapter worked again, just once, then killed all the ports once again when I removed it. Anyone know how to fix this? I feel like perhaps my earlier attempt to install the Asix driver package somehow "broke" the USB controllers (I've since uninstalled the Asix driver package, so perhaps it took a piece of the USB controller with it). Do I need to reinstall the chipset drivers?
     
    pipspeak, Feb 11, 2014
    #1
  2. ajkula66

    ajkula66 Courage and Consequence

    Reputations:
    3,018
    Messages:
    3,198
    Likes Received:
    2,318
    Trophy Points:
    231

    Give it a shot, it won't hurt.

    Pretty wild story altogether.

    Good luck.
     
    ajkula66, Feb 11, 2014
    #2
  3. pipspeak

    pipspeak Notebook Deity

    Reputations:
    94
    Messages:
    1,041
    Likes Received:
    55
    Trophy Points:
    66
    well that didn't work. Looks like I have a case of the infamous Win8.1 USB 3.0 stack instability problem. Or maybe there is after all some problem with the ethernet adapter, though I find that hard to believe considering it works flawlessly with another win8.1 machine.

    To make matters worse, the recovery partition on the troublesome machine is not working, either, so I'm kinda screwed since I have no other Win8.1 recovery media.It's at times like this I truly hate Microsoft and Windows.
     
    pipspeak, Feb 12, 2014
    #3