USB Issues with Z77 OC Formula

[Iblan]

Hi there, I'm new to the forum here.

I recently bought an ASRock OC Formula and I have to start by saying that so far it has been fantastic. I haven't begun to push it yet, but the few things I have done (like the RAID 0 setup) have been painless.

Sadly I am having issues, although I am not 100% sure that it is the mobo. I tried plugging in a USB thumb drive for the first time last night (after a week with the computer up and running) and it blue screened. After a successful reboot, I tried plugging it in again to see if it would have the same effect. This time nothing happened. "Nothing" includes Windows not picking up the drive and displaying its contents. Now this was a USB 3.0 on the case, so instead I tried to move the stick to a 2.0 port on the motherboard. Same result: nothing.

When going into Windows Disk Management it shows the drive but when right clicking it there is no action except format, change drive letter and properties. When I click properties, it throws an error that Disk Management View is out of date and to refresh the view and try again. Needless to say refreshing the view yields no different results. When I first built my computer, I tried to plug in my backup drive through a caddy and it had a similar problem: no drive showed up, but it was in Disk Management. The only option there was to initialize the disk (which I tried doing because I had another backup on a different drive). The initialization failed to complete though and the drive remained unusable.

Now to make it really interesting: USB optical drives aren't having issues. I plugged one in just to troubleshoot and it was able to open a CD no problem. This leaves me wondering if there is an issue mounting volumes (which I don't believe a CD qualifies as). Again, I don't know if this is a motherboard issue, but I'm trying everywhere. I've re-installed the drivers, updated the BIOS (with the insanely helpful Internet Flash function, which was awesome) turned off fast-boot, removed XFAST USB (or whatever it is called) and tried multiple thumb drives/hard drives. I've also tried these drives on other machines with complete success. Perhaps I have a corrupt Windows Installation or perhaps I missed a motherboard setting somewhere, but I need to fix this soon. I will probably re-install Windows tonight to eliminate that as an issue, but I'd like to see if there is a known or possible issue with the motherboard first.

Thank you for the help!

[parsec]

So your Phantom has the updated USB 3.0 input on the case? Older ones (like mine) do not have a USB 3.0 input on the case, although you can get a new I/O panel. The cases I/O panel has the USB3.0 cable connected to the USB3.0 connector on your board of course?

Not sure what UEFI version you have, could be 1.60 after your update, which has a USB compatibility update.

There are drivers for the Intel and Etron chip USB3.0 support on the board, and IME and the chipset (inf) files must be installed, just to review. Your boards back panel has four USB3.0 ports from the Etron chips, and two from the Intel Z77. I would try the back panel USB3.0 ports with a USB3.0 flash drive for testing. If you can ID which ports are which, that might help narrow things down.

My Z77 EX4 board has no problems with the USB3.0 inputs. The USB3.0 inputs on PC cases can be flaky, I had to have them replaced on a Corsair case.

[Iblan]

After exauhsting my issues, I reinstalled Windows, and it seemed to do the trick. Atm I have a fully functioning computer. Now time to blow that all out of the water with a little OC'ing...

[synack]

After exauhsting my issues, I reinstalled Windows, and it seemed to do the trick. Atm I have a fully functioning computer. Now time to blow that all out of the water with a little OC'ing...

Congrats on the OC formula, Its a fantastically solid board that does wonders :)

Let us know how you do!

Syn