How to Fix USB Ports not Working?

I need some help – the USB won’t appear on my PC!

Today, I planned on copying some personal files from my Windows 10 PC to my USB drive. The USB drive was Kingston 3.0 and it worked just well before. However, this time, after plugging it into the USB port, nothing happened – the drive wasn’t read and didn’t appear in This PC at all! Can anyone give me a solution to the USB ports not working issue?

Why are USB ports not working Windows 10?

The USB drive brings us many conveniences for its portability and it plays an importable role in our daily life. Generally, people transfer data between their USBs and computers. The transfer process can be pretty easy when there’s nothing going wrong. However, unfortunately, sometimes you may run into glitches when using a USB, for example, USB not working/USB port not working. That’s when you insert a USB drive into your PC, the USB drive doesn’t appear in This PC and thus, it’s unreadable. So, in the following content, I’ll list several possible causes to desktop/laptop USB port not working.

Cause 1: Power surge on USB port

Cause 2: USB drive not updated

Cause 3: USB connection cable is broken

Cause 4: USB port is faulty or broke

Please note that the easiest and most basic way to fix the glitch is to restart your computer or to change the USB cable. If they don’t work, then, just follow the tutorial below to make your USB recognizable again!

Check whether a USB port is not working

Before learning the solutions, you should first confirm whether there’s really something wrong with the USB port.

1. Reboot the computer and reconnect the USB drive to it via the USB port:

Unplug the USB drive from the PC, reboot the PC, and reconnect the USB drive to the PC.

If it works, then, the issue could be caused by a loose connection between the drive and the port; if not, just read on.

2. Change a USB cable and switch to another USB port:

Shut down your computer and disconnect the USB drive from it. Replace the old cable with a new one and reconnect it to your computer. Reboot the computer and see whether the icon of the USB appear on Windows 10.

If the USB is still undetectable, try switching to another port. If it works, then, there should be something wrong with the previous port.

3. Check whether the PC pops up an error message:

Pay attention, if there’s a message popping up on your computer after plugging the USB drive telling you that “Power surge on the USB port…”, then, the USB port should be where the problem is.

How to fix USB ports not working on Windows 10 in 3 different ways?

Finally, we came to this part after figuring out whether there’s something wrong with the USB port. In the following content, the fixes will be given to help make the USB port work again.

Method 1. Tweak Power Management

By making a few changes to Power Management, you may solve the USB ports not working issue once for all.

1. In the search box on the desktop, type “device manager” and hit “ENTER” to bring up the Device Manager window.

2. Double-click on “Universal Serial Bus controller” which is the final item.

3. In the dropdown list, you’ll notice several USB root hubs. Right-click on any of them and select “Properties”.

4. Select “Power Management” in the Properties window.

5. Uncheck the option “Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power”.

6. Repeat the steps above for the other USB root hubs.

After the steps above, disconnect and reconnect the USB to the computer to check whether it works.

Method 2. Uninstall and reinstall Universal Bus Controllers Drivers

1. Enter “Device Manager” as what you did in the beginning of Method 1.

2. Expand “Universal Serial BUS controllers” and find the USB root hub with a yellow exclamation mark.

3. Right-click on it, hit “Uninstall”, and hit “OK”.

4. When the process is completed, reboot your computer.

5. Go to the “Action” tab of Device Manager.

6. Select “Scan for hardware changes”.

Then, the USB port will be displayed. Now, reconnect the USB drive to your computer and check whether it’s recognizable.

Method 3. Disable USB Selective Suspend Feature

1. In the search box, type “choose a power plan” and hit “ENTER”.

2. In the Power Option window, click on “Change plan settings” under “additional plans”.

3. Click on “Change advanced power settings”.

4. Double-click on “USB settings” > “USB selective suspend setting”. Disable it and hit “Apply” and “OK” to save the changes.

How to fix PS4 USB port not working?

There’re 2 USB ports on PS4 for you to transfer data. However, sometimes, your USB drive can’t be recognized by either of them. The reason is that PS4 requires a file system of FAT32 for external USB drives. If your USB is in NTFS, then, you may meet USB port not working. In this case, I recommend a powerful third-party utility to convert NTFS to FAT32 for PS4 without data loss and that’s AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard. Unlike formatting, the NTFS FAT32 converter allows you to directly make conversion between 2 files systems and thus, no data will be deleted. More than this converter, the impressive freeware also supports hard disk clone and hard drive wiping for your PS4.

How to fix PS4 USB port not working, free download this amazing disk management software to make a conversion between NTFS and FAT32!

Step 1. Connect the USB drive with the PC, install and launch AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard, and hit “Convert” on the top.

Step 2. Select “Convert to NTFS/FAT32".

Step 3. In the popup window, tick “NTFS to FAT32” and hit “Next”.

Step 4. Select the USB partition you want to convert and hit “Next” again.

Step 5. Hit “Proceed” and confirm the operation. When the process is completed, click on “Finish”.

Conclusion

You may run into the issue of “USB not working” or “USB ports not working” when you connect your USB flash drive into your PC for file transfer. Luckily, in this post, you’ve learnt why the glitch happens and how to fix it. Also, you could run into a similar problem “PS4 USB port not working” when using USB on PS4. In this case, a powerful third-party disk management utility was introduced to help convert NTFS to FAT32 to make the USB compatible with the console. As for this freeware, if you hope to try its other features like MBR-GPT system disk conversion and free space allocation, you should upgrade it to the professional edition.