Bought a Lenovo Yoga, within a few months a USB port failed. Replaced it with another Yoga, just about had Roon set up, and a USB port fails again, this time inside of a week! Now switching to an HP and my third effort at setting up Roon. I hope the third time is the charm.
WoW, Two laptops both USB went bad?
Is it a known problem? Are you sure that your hardware is not causing a short?
I wondered about that too. I asked the Best Buy people, and they did not seem to think so. Not sure I trust their expertise. Has anyone come across this? I use the Mytek Brooklyn.
I have come across equipment that would short the BUS. There is something to think about here. If the USB buss is going bad than anything attached to that bus is bad as well… So all usb ports bad?
Anything I/O related to your pc working at all?
As far as I know, only one of two USB ports failed and everything else seemed okay.
Nothing works on that USB port?
If you plug in a USB drive on that port, Does it work?
Correct, nothing works from the failed port.
@diver110 The only thing that comes to mind, Is to remove the hub and had windows rescan for it. Also try your DAC on another port. If it nukes it than you know is your DAC.
My next laptop will have 3 usb ports. It will also be a work computer for me, but I will make sure to always use the same port for my dac. Really, if a third port fails, it will pretty much have to be dac, though I don’t quite understand how a dac can fry a port.
PS A response I got from another forum:
The port failure was not caused by the DAC. The port failure occured because, as is typical with most such failures, the hardware implementation of the port and (most likely) its power supply was flaky and possibly the BIOS firmware and/or port driver was flaky or buggy too. An external DAC can’t cause a USB port failure! We can’t blame a fully compatible USB device plugged into a USB port for the port’s failure, otherwise what good is the port in the first place?
That response made me laugh… But hey for each its own 
Good luck!
Crappy Chinese circuit boards, probably capacitors. I’ve had USB failures on iFI and HDMI board failures on Onkyo receivers. On the other hand my Little Dot has been flawless. So, who knows?
+1, I seen so many issues go so many ways.
Well, got the third computer (HP this time). So far, so good. I am getting fairly good at setting up Roon, having had to do it so often. Everything looked right, but still no sound. Turned out the dac was not plugged into the sytem.
Still don’t have the remote working. Too weary to deal with the firewall. Let’s hope the usb port holds up.
Question about your iFi setup. Do you use the gemini cable? If so, did you find it used somewhere? It’s a little too pricey for me. I’ve been looking at a double headed cable made by a firm, Audiocadabra, out of India. It gets good reviews around the web. Half the cost of the gemini.
I’m torn about these types of USB; could just as easily be snake oil. Any thoughts?
Funny you should bring that up, because at an audiophile club meeting yesterday, someone told me the usb cable could have been the problem. I switched it out. Instead of the cable that came with the Brooklyn, I am using one I got from Amazon, nothing fancy. I am no expert, but have been told since we are dealing with 1’s and 0’s, the cable should not really matter as long as it is not defective.
Can’t speak highly enough about the microRendu. No mass-produced motherboard will ever come close. Only 700$
There is a ton of controversy about it being just 1s and 0s. There are strong feelings on both sides.
I guess the thing to do is to try the supposedly better one and see if you hear a difference.
Sometimes when a USB device draws more power from the USB port hardware than it’s designed to supply, it can fry the USB port on a long term basis.
I have also personally fried a USB device (a WiFi dongle) during hot plugging with a home-built computer.