USB Ports Locking Up

[#1]

A little conundrum for techies to ponder:

I had a FAT32 formatted SSD connected to the TV. This was self powered from a TV USB socket via a USB3 to SATA interface cable. All working fine for months. Yesterday I noticed that the TV no longer recognised that there was a USB device connected. Removed the SSD with the interface cable and to see if it had failed, plugged it in to a USB socket on my PC, as had been done many times before.

PC put up a 'USB Power Surge' error message and locked up. Shut the PC down. Tried to reboot and the BIOS threw out a 'No USB Device Detected' message before starting to boot Windows 11. Tried this multiple times. Checked the USB ports, all reported 5V available. Windows would boot but was useless as I had no keyboard or mouse. Gave up and started looking at the price of a new PC.

This morning I looked again and it was exactly the same message before Windows started to boot. Left it for Windows to boot. Spent some time poking around and plugging USB devices various into USB sockets various. Suddenly it came back to life and has worked perfectly ever since.

So this begs the questions:

Can a screwed up BIOS recover on it's own?

Can Windows correct a screwed up BIOS configuration?

If it was a Windows glitch why did the BIOS report it before Windows started?

Did the surge temporarily affect the battery backed voltage to the BIOS chip and it needed to be connected for a bit to put some life back in to the battery? If so, why was only USB affected and its a primary button cell?

Other ideas/theories?

One SSD and Interface cable are headed for the recycling bin. There's nothing like this to bring home how useless a PC is without working USB ports.

[#2 · Accepted solution]

https://elinux.org/Polyfuses_explained 

[#3]

@Anonymous 

Thanks. That’s something new that I’ve learnt today.

[#4]

and me!

[#5]

Me too.

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@Baldrick1 wrote: There's nothing like this to bring home how useless a PC is without working USB ports.

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@Baldrick1 

You could always pre-install something like 'Remote Mouse' app on your phone and its corresponding program on your PC then you can control the PC via WiFi if your USB ever fails.

There are probably others.

Remote Mouse - Keyboard Mouse and Touchpad

[#6]

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@Baldrick1 wrote:

There's nothing like this to bring home how useless a PC is without working USB ports.

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Having had various ancient motherboards have the onboard USB port functionality fail due to old age (probably of the associated capacitors drying out),  I've kept the computers alive by simply fitting a spare PCI card (with USB ports) and disabling the motherboard's broken USB hardware in the BIOS.  It's worth using the simplest card possible - as anything sophisticated that needs a driver *MIGHT* not detect keyboard and mouse during boot, or when attempting to get in to BIOS screens !.

[#7]

@Anonymous 

One arrived yesterday, that was the first thing that I did to see if it would get me going again. I will keep it in stock. What got me was that it temporarily killed every USB port, so presumably this is a global feature, not protection for individual ports.