HP Z4 G5 USB issues

[phippshbg]

We have purchased (5) HP Z4 G5 workstations in two batches recently.  They all came with Windows 11 but I put Windows 10 on one of these for troubleshooting this issue. Two of these from the first batch started having USB problems. Initially, the USB audio would go out, and unplugging/plugging back in would fix it but then doing that stopped fixing it. Next, the mouse and keyboard would stop working. The system would not recognize if you plugged in a USB flash drive after this issue started. When these issues start you will not hear the Windows sound of the USB device being unplugged, they just stop working.

I then took one of those systems and installed Windows 10 on it to see if it was an OS-dependent issue, it did the same thing in less than a day so it doesn't seem to be OS-dependent.

I then took one of the systems from the second batch and had the exact same problem. USB starts having issues in less than a day and sometimes only a reboot will fix it.

I've got a ticket open with HP but I wanted to reach out and see if anyone else is seeing this. We've spent a ton of money on these and currently, they are unusable.

[Z440Roger]

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@phippshbg wrote:

I've got a ticket open with HP but I wanted to reach out and see if anyone else is seeing this. We've spent a ton of money on these and currently, they are unusable.

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Yes, i have a Z4 G5 and have USB issues as well. "Power surge on the USB port. Unknown USB Device needs more power than the port can supply"  is one of the issues and after that the port is shut down until i restart the computer. I bought the Thunderbolt card as well and get similar error messages as well and even hard crashes of the computer. I have tried clean installs of Win 11 and Win 10 but nothing changes.

I bought a simple cheap SuperSpeed USB 20 Gbps PCI Express card from Delock to rule out the HP motherboard. I have had no issues with USB 3.2 with that card and when measuring the voltage it delivers a tad more than the internal ports fed from the motherboard.

So in short the USB ports on the Z4 G5 is garbage. I have not yet contacted support due to lot´s of jobs.

I have the Z4 G4 as well and have no problems with any of the USB ports.

This is the card i bought:

Delock Products 89035 Delock PCI Express x4 Card to 1 x external SuperSpeed USB 20 Gbps (USB 3.2 Gen...

[phippshbg]

Thanks, Z440Roger.

I really hate to hear that. We've used the Z series workstations for years without issue so this is a big surprise coming from HP.

I'm still waiting to hear back from HP Support but will look into a USB card until they can provide a resolution.

Thanks!