i bought myself a card reader the other day. plugged it into a usb port on the front of my computer and the computer makes a noise to say that it isn't recognised. so i try again, same. try a different usb lead, same. try another usb port on the front, same. try a usb port on the back of the computer, works. ok, so the front usb's don't work, fine. but no, they work with everything else. memory sticks, scanner, camera all work on the front  usb ports but the card reader doesn't. strange. it's not really a problem, I'm just womdering what's going on.

any ideas?

the internal usb headers on your mobo are powered from a different chipset or the voltage rail is poo poo, happens quite often on cheaper mobo's.

does an intel  d865glc desktop board count as cheap. because i know that when they first came out they were considered some of the best mobo's in their class. the computer used to be a university workstation computer costing around £2000 five years ago. i bought it for £80! the specs aren't bad either considering the price

intel pentium 4 3.00ghz HT
intel d865glc mobo
maxtor diamondmax 160gb hdd
matrox parhelia 128mb graphics
1gig ram
the slowest possibe dvd/rw drive in the world
crappy beige RM  case (no longer)

i admit  there are some not  so good components  in  there (namely dvd/rw, hdd and graphics) but the rest isn't bad for £80. the graphics may be pretty spoony but those cards retail for about £350 each.

anyway, back on the subject, any other ideas? i don't think power is an issue because the scanner that runs off the front usb ports gets its power over usb, and that's bound to use more power than a card reader, isn't it?

My old computer did that. Maybe because they aren't USB 2.0?

a.) they are usb2.0
b.) it shouldn't matter because every device that's usb2.0 compatible is also usb1.1 compatible (i think, I've never come across  anything that isn't)

yeah. I dunno but mine still does that aswell. I just got used to putting it in through the back untill I got my new comp which isn't really new anymore......