I recently bought a new microphone, but I'm facing a huge problem. Every time I connect it to my computer, all the USB ports stop working, regardless of which port I use. The only way to get them working again is to physically restart my PC—software restarts just fail and loop. I've tested the microphone on multiple devices, including my phone, a laptop, and three different desktop PCs, and it works fine everywhere except for two of my desktop PCs, including my personal custom build which is the one I really need it to work on. One of the other PCs recognized the microphone but the audio quality was terrible and cut out a lot. There's also no sound cue when I plug the mic into my PC. I've read online and some believe that the microphone might be drawing too much power, causing my PC to disable the USB ports for safety. A common suggestion I've found is to use an externally powered USB hub. Has anyone experienced something similar? How can I resolve this?
1 Answer
It sounds like your mic might indeed be causing a power issue. I had a similar experience, and on my laptop, it would just render one USB port unusable when it shorted out. For my desktop, the entire USB controller would shut down, which made things really frustrating. Sometimes the mic would work, but that felt more like luck than a solution.
I’ve tried connecting my mic directly to a wall outlet with a 5V/1A charger, which is supposed to match its requirements, and it worked fine! So maybe it’s not just a power issue from the PC, but something else?