So I've had a handful of computer systems over more than thirty years as well as used much more than a handful of computers over my work career - self-built AND pre-built between the two domains - and have done my share of amateur troubleshooting for friends and family as well and I'm wondering why USB connectivity is not 100%?
Obviously, nothing in life is not 100% but what I mean is that my graphics card does not sometimes not connect upon boot. Neither does it disconnect during operation. Nor does it require that someone try a different PCI-E slot if the designated one according to the manual stops working.
But all of those are pretty common scenarios with USB devices. And some of the more irritating and inexplicable faults is when you just randomly hear the USB disconnect sound while you're doing something even unrelated to the device that got disconnected like a web camera and it simply is not seen by the system anymore and you have to either try plugging it into a different USB port or even end up having to reboot the system - at which time, you frequently get the device back!
Why is that something that needs to happen?
(Generally, when questions like this are asked, you invariably get a raft of responses saying, "that never happens to me". And if that's the case, great. I'm really happy for you. But can you please not chime in? Because this has been the experience for me and the people in my life whether at home or at work and I'd really like to understand what is going on.)
Thanks much.
The common paths to resolving the issue is:
- unplugging and re-plugging
- re-plugging into a different USB port
- frequently repeated but unuseful internet advice of re-installing the driver
- rebooting
sometimes, each of these work. sometimes, they don't.