Port Connection Issues?

S

SCMZ

Member
(Vague title, sorry, couldn't think of any other wording!) Hello, I've had a strange issue pop up with my new computer, only twice, but it is pretty unsettling given I've only had the PC for about 2 months. I record Let's Plays of games, and during two different recordings (one of which I scrapped and re-recorded), I had some of my setup just die. My microphone and controller (both plugged into the case's top two USB ports, controller is a PS4 controller), my earphones (bluetooth, which I assume is built-in to my motherboard), and my main speakers (which the audio would normally revert to if my earphones disconnect/die) which are a regular speaker line-in connection on the back of the PC, they all basically die. It takes a minute or so for things to re-connect, after which everything resumes working just fine.
This doesn't seem to affect my gameplay/capturing software, other than the lack of sound, (I can 'show' the issue in a video once I've rendered the section this happens.) and that the controller doesn't work in-game. Keyboard and mouse, yes, I can still use those just fine, the game is still working as normal. I think this first occured on the 3rd of this month, and of course earlier today. CPU and GPU don't seem to be an issue, sitting around 40-50% during everything.
I don't know if this is a hardware or software issue, so I thought I'd at least start an elimination process and hope for the best.


Case
LIAN LI LANCOOL II GAMING CASE
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen 5 5600X Six Core CPU (3.7GHz-4.6GHz/35MB CACHE/AM4)
Motherboard
ASUS® TUF GAMING B550-PLUS WiFi (DDR4, USB 3.2, 6Gb/s) - ARGB Ready!
Memory (RAM)
32GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3200MHz (2 x 16GB)
Graphics Card
12GB NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 3060 - HDMI, DP
1st Storage Drive
2TB SEAGATE BARRACUDA SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 7200RPM, 256MB CACHE
1st M.2 SSD Drive
500GB SAMSUNG 980 PRO M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 6900MB/R, 5000MB/W)
1st M.2 SSD Drive
1TB INTEL® 670p M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD (up to 3500MB/sR | 2500MB/sW)
Memory Card Reader
USB 3.0 EXTERNAL SD/MICRO SD CARD READER
Power Supply
CORSAIR 850W RMx SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
Corsair H100x Hydro Series High Performance CPU Cooler
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Card
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT
USB/Thunderbolt Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence [KUK-00001]
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
Windows 10 Multi-Language Recovery Image - Supplied on USB Drive
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft 365® (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Browser
Firefox™
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 14 to 17 working days
Welcome Book
PCSpecialist Welcome Book - United Kingdom & Republic of Ireland
Logo Branding
PCSpecialist Logo
Price: £0.00 including VAT and Delivery
Unique URL to re-configure: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/amd-am4-gen3-pc/4X99mKjk!6/
 
S

SCMZ

Member
Quick video in my editor showing the 'disconnection' problem as best I can. My recording software, OBS Studio, shows all audio channels go entirely blank, reflected in my editor here as no audio waveform is present. Once the mircophone and earphone started working again, only THEN did my controller also start working again.

 
Tron1982

Tron1982

VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
OH ! Okami !
One of my favorite game

edit : otherwise, i'm sorry, but i have no clue ^^"
 
S

SCMZ

Member
I have no idea, it’s only happened twice, and the controller and microphone were plugged into the top ports both times. It’s the fact that the Bluetooth connection and my speakers become unresponsive too that’s worrying.
 
S

SCMZ

Member
Definitely the latter. The first time I’d recorded 2 episodes prior to the one where this first occurred, twice. Maybe within 10-15 minutes of each other. I’ve recorded several other episodes since then, and this didn’t occur in any of them. Although I did have a different problem, my microphone audio would infrequently cut out for a split second. I can’t get that to replicate in tests either.
 
S

SCMZ

Member
Okay, so I realised that the main problem I have here is audio related. All the audio systems stop working, all at once, for no apparent reason, then my speakers are the first to come back 'online', followed a short while later by my microphone and earphones. As seen in my video above. Is there a process or service in windows 10 that might be bugging out or restarting that could be causing this?

Just a side note too, my PS4 controller does have an audio out port, though nothing is connected there at any time. Relatable to the audio issues maybe? It does come back online at the same time as the microphone and earphones, so what process connects all of those?
My mouse and keyboard are also USB connected (wired) to the back ports of the computer. Neither of those are affected, as I was able to immediately Ctrl+Alt+Delete to access Task Manager to check the usage levels, all of which were normal for the circumstances.
 
S

SCMZ

Member
New info, it just happened a short while ago while I was recording again, this time I opened Device Manager, and noted the following: (1) Under 'Human Interface Devices' my controller was no longer listed, normally there as 'HID-compliant game controller'. (2) Under 'Network adapters', the Bluetooth Device entry was missing as well. (3) Under 'Univeral Serial Bus controllers' there was not only less entries there than there are now (10 listed now, compared to the 5 or 6 before restarting the PC), one of the entries (AMD USB 3.10 eXtensible-Host Controller 1.10 (Microsoft)) had an error, Code 43. I uninstalled the driver of the affected device and restarted my computer, now everything seems to be back to normal again.
Interesting thing this time, while my microphone, earphones and controller stopped working, my speakers were not affected, the game audio immediately switched to them. I had also switched my mic to one of the back USB ports, likely the primary one that got the Code 43 error.
 
S

SCMZ

Member
So, in addition to uninstalling the driver mentioned, and restarting my PC, I've now also updated my AMD chipset drivers (after yet more googling). Whether that'll help or not is yet to be seen (or heard in this case!).
While I was looking at everything in Device Manager, I switched the view to 'by connection'. The AMD USB etc. entry, that has my main three 'disconnecting' devices under it, bluetooth, microphone and controller.
There is a second, same named device, that has my mouse and keyboard listed under it. These were unaffected all three times I've had this issue, so there's some explanation, not that I quite understand why it all happened in the first place. I'm not this technical!!o_O
As another note, the PCI to PCI Bridges they seem to be under are different too. M&K and speakers are under one such connection, the other three are under a different PCI Bridge.
I don't yet know if this is 'fixed', but, hopefully I found the cause. Hopefully it's not a symptom of something else.
 
ubuysa

ubuysa

The BSOD Doctor
SCMZ said:
I just threw everything from that post into a zip folder, just to be safe.

Logs-SCMZ.zip

drive.google.com drive.google.com
Click to expand...
Looking through your drivers I can see that you have Norton security installed. I would suggest you uninstall it completely and see how things are. The number one cause of stupid issues like yours are third party security systems. You don't need to be paying for decent security, Windows Defender is all you need.

In your System log I can see a bug check on 26th Oct for an INTERNAL_POWER_ERROR, the reason was an 'incorrect checksum'. That suggests a driver issue (Norton?) but it could also be hardware. A dump for this bug check is in C:\Windows\Minidump\102121-9453-01.dmp, you might want to upload that here.

The were three BSODs on 13th Oct, all for a CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT error. This indicates that a processor was unresponsive for too long, this is usually a CPU hardware issue (though it potentially could be a driver conflict of some sort - Norton again?). There is (or was) a kernel dump for the latest one of these in C:\Windows\Memory.dmp, upload that to the cloud with a link to it here (the others will have been overwritten).

The first thing you should do IMO is remove Norton Security, I'll not be surprised at all if that's the root cause....
 
S

SCMZ

Member
I’ll get those uploaded when I get back to my computer. Those three BSOD I remember, I was trying to run an android simulator called Nox, as a means of running a game that was overheating my iPad if I played too long. Worked fine on my old PC, but I’d removed that on the same day since it caused those BSODs.
Regarding Norton, I have quite a high paranoia level about computer security, since basic windows security caused me to lose 3-4 years of work when I picked up a virus from somewhere, also unknowingly having infected my backups too. Granted that was back in 2010, it’s stuck with me.
 
ubuysa

ubuysa

The BSOD Doctor
SCMZ said:
Regarding Norton, I have quite a high paranoia level about computer security, since basic windows security caused me to lose 3-4 years of work when I picked up a virus from somewhere, also unknowingly having infected my backups too. Granted that was back in 2010, it’s stuck with me.
Click to expand...
Defender has moved on a lot since 2010. Norton is not giving you anything extra that you need - and you're paying for it. If you're resistant to dumping it for good then uninstall Norton for a week or two and see whether the port issue resolves itself.
 
S

SCMZ

Member
Okay, I'll at least do that. Some of my family are on my Norton plan though, not all of them have windows 10. I'll keep Norton on for today while I do some recordings, then take it off for a week and see how things go.
 
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