VIA woes (KT4AV mobo)

A year ago, I bought a computer system with an AMD Athlon-XP 2400+
processor and an MSI KT4AV mobo. Today the USB completely stopped
working. This system runs under both Windows 2K Pro (SP2) and Mandrake
Linux 10.0, and USB won't work under either O/S. Moreover, every time I
boot into Win2K, the new hardware wizard starts up, but installation of a
supposed new USB device fails.

Unfortunately, I now know of the inferior quality of VIA chipsets.
Earlier this year, I had problems with the on-board LAN (on both O/S's),
so I installed a PCI LAN card. I have also had occasional problems with
the on-board sound (again, on both O/S's), so I plan to get a PCI sound
card soon.

Now with this USB problem which, once again, seems to be independent of
the O/S, I have thought about getting a PCI USB card. But I am skeptical
that other VIA-based features may go screwy in time. So my questions are:

1. What other VIA on-board features besides audio, LAN and USB are likely
to have problems?

2. Would it be worth it to just get a new (non-VIA) mobo instead of the 2
PCI cards?

Thanks in advance for any information you could provide.

 

Well, here's some interesting additional info:

I just tried my 3 USB devices (HP ScanJet scanner, HP DeskJet printer,
SanDisk memory card reader). The USB worked under both Win2K and Linux
with the card reader, but not with the printer or scanner on either O/S.

I then tried the printer and scanner USB cables in the port that the card
reader was plugged into, but that did help.

Weird!!

 

Do you have legacy or dos support enabled for usb, in you BIOS? If so
disable that.

 

It has always been disabled. :-(

 

First of all, my last statement should have said "but that did NOT help".

Anyway, shortly after my test above, my printer was working again but the
scanner was not. I then remembered having a similar problem earlier this
year with the scanner (which was my only USB device at the time). I
followed a suggestion in the troubleshooting guide in the scanner's manual
(as I had done the previous time), and now all of my USB devices work
again under both Win2K and Linux.

I had previously used this scanner for over a year on an older computer
with a non-VIA chipset and had no USB problems. So here's another
question: Are these periodic USB problems I am experiencing more common
with VIA chipsets, or do they happen from time to time regardless of the
chipset maker?

Thanks.