Don Phillipson wrote:
On an ASUS P4P800S motherboard (2004) the four back-
panel USB jacks now seem unreliable (intermittent.) The two
front panel USB jacks appear OK.
1. Is this a known problem with Asus MBs? (Perhaps few
people still run a year 2004 mb.)
2. Is my simplest solution simply to add a PCI card with
multiple USB jacks?


I would install that PCI USB2 card, before you blow it up :-)

With the known issue, of the ICH5 being sensitive to static,
if there were any signs of trouble, I'd switch to the PCI card.
Just to be safe. (Note - this page doesn't render well
any more, but the text in it is still relevant. It's the
only public admission that there is a problem with ICH5,
and Intel has never provided similar info.)

http://web.archive.org/web/200604301...AQ/FAQ_456.htm

And my P4C800-E Deluxe, with ICH5R, still runs. And one of the
reasons for that, could be that I don't use the USB ports.
Similarly, the front panel USB ports aren't wired up. It's
about as protected as I can make it.

Paul