How to Disable Broken USB

Darren

Darren

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Staff member
I somehow managed to break off the black plastic inside my USB port on the back of my computer. I'm not sure when this happened but I tried putting in a USB drive and my computer just froze. Turns out the black piece is gone and I bent the prongs in the USB and it shorted out and prevented me from POSTing and thus booting. My dad and I worked on it for a while with me in minor panic attack mode. He was able to bend the prongs away from each other and the sides and it booted up with no problems.

My question is how can I completely disable this USB port (might have to do it in pairs as it's got another one right next to it that connects to it on the connection to the mobo). I'm gonna block it off with some tape to prevent me from using it but is there a way to completely disable so that if it did short again, it would just ignore it and let me boot?
 
I doubt there is a way to disable that one particular port, the best thing to do would be as you said, put some tape over it cover it or something.
 
Even if you could disable it via software there would still be power going to it.

If the black plastic is broken off I imagine there would be four contacts floating around loose inside the socket. While the machine is powered off I would try to break these off with tweezers so they dont short out in the future. Then tape it back up.
 
The port is already broken.

All you want to do is make sure they cannot flop around and short with each other.

Either try to insulate from one another, ie heatshrink, tape etc (very fiddly considering the size of a usb port). Or simply cut them off.

The last thing you want is them floating around loose in there. When they short they might just cause your machine to power off, or they might cause damage to the motherboard.
 
You could stick flat toothpicks between the prongs to keep them separated. Also you can cover the slot with hot glue so it won't be used anymore.
 
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