Fatal1ty Killer Z97X USB Power

Hi all,

Zakkary123 wrote: Hi all, I have a z97X Fatal1ty Killer motherboard. My PC is running windows 10, latest updates, and my motherboard bios version is up to date (2.50). Recently, I have had an issue where my PC will not shut down the USB ports. I have several externally powered USB drives, all of which used to stop spinning completely when I 'shut down' the PC. Now, they spin down, but start spinning back up immediately. If I remove them from the USB ports they stop again, indicating the ports are still powered. I have read a whole lot of threads and tried a whole bunch of obvious solutions, including: - Disabling windows 'fast start' (which was never on) - Disabling hibernate through the windows command line - Enabling deep sleep in S4/S5 in motherboard bios (have tried both other options as well) - All 'wake on LAN', 'wake on Keyboard' etc. are disabled in bios - All USB devices have 'allow device to wake computer' unchecked in device manager - As a last resort I reset the BIOS to defaults, which did not help As far as I can tell there is no reason the USB ports should remain powered, and as mentioned, everything was working fine for almost 2 years and I don't think I changed anything. Currently I have to turn the PC off at the PSU every night, but this has been causing issues getting all the hard drives to recognize in windows if I am too slow turning the PC back on (as they briefly lose power when I press the power button). The computer is a media center, but we don't want the drives spinning all the time and there's no need to have the PC on at night. If anyone has any suggestions I would be eternally grateful! I've emailed Asrock support twice over the course of several months but there is no response. Thanks

I'm surprised your USB drives are suddenly remaining powered on after apparently that not happening in the past, since power to the USB ports remaining on is a rather standard feature for ASRock and other manufactures boards for a while now. That is considered a feature that allows charging devices like cell phones to be done while the PC is shutdown.

While some users like this feature, others don't for various reasons such as your situation. We here about this all the time in the forum, from users that don't like it.

Also, if you have the AppCharger ver:1.0.6 software installed, that will provide even more power to the USB ports when the PC is shutdown, insuring the external USB drives will remain powered up.

How do you install drivers and software on that PC? Do you use the disk supplied with the board and install everything, or do it manually?

Sorry to say, all the things you listed that you tried to do to remove power from the USB ports will have no effect. Also, the Windows Fast Startup feature is always enabled by default in Windows 10 and the other versions that support it, and must be manually disabled, the only way it won't be on.

Since you claim that this behavior is new to your PC, I wonder if a Windows 10 update or automatic driver installation caused this to happen. When you installed Windows 10, did you use the Express settings, or did you manually configure Windows 10 to not update drivers and software automatically?

Also, possibly a UEFI/BIOS update changed the default setting of the following option that is used to remove power to the USB ports.

In the UEFI/BIOS, Chipset Configuration screen, find the Good Night LED option, and set it to Enabled. That should remove power to the USB ports when the PC is shutdown. But you may find that causes a side affect that I'll discuss below.

When you turn off the PSU as you described, and then turn it on again, the mother board is not in the same shutdown state regarding power supplied to the board compared to simply doing a Windows shutdown and leaving the PSU on. When a PC is shutdown in Windows, some power is always supplied to the board, otherwise it would not start when the power button is pressed, and features like Wake On LAN would not work.

That is most likely why your USB drives are not being recognized when you start the PC after turning off the PSU. They take longer to wake up and operate than the POST and boot process takes. If the same HDDs were connected via SATA ports to the board, POST would wait for them to wake up before Windows began booting. POST cannot do that with USB connected HDDs. Your USB drives may have been in a partially powered up state all along in the past when the PSU was left on after a shutdown. Otherwise, what could explain the difference when you turn off the PSU, and if you don't?