USB 3.0 Hub Broken on Mac OS Monterey 12.0.1

I think it’s an inconvenience though design - USB cables can carry a lot of power and can cause damage. so they may be locking down on poor non-certified cables to help prevent warranty claims. Pain in the butt it is.

I use Seagate Fast SSD and the cable that came with the SSD I don't think a brand like Seagate would cheap out on cable. Not only that I mean even my iPhone cable that came from apple itself is not charging as fast as when the OS is BigSur. So I don't believe its uncertified cable.

I have three USB hubs, one is USB 2.0, a second is USB 3.0 and a third is TB. All three are plugged-into my 2018 Intel Mac Mini full-time. All three are flakey to one extent or another - peripheral devices that work in one USB port on one hub will cease to work at seemingly. random times and will, sometimes, work on one of the other hubs. All peripherals (but not the hubs, so far) and cables have been verified "good" by plugging into a Win10 (ugh!) laptop. The hubs are different ages, manufacturers and, clearly, host interfaced to the the Mini.

Any help would be very much appreciated.

Thanks Pie Lover,

I guess I have not been clear enough about my USB setup and peripherals. I have 3 USB hubs of different ages and capabilities to accommodate a large number of peripheral devices, 3 printers, a scanner, a smart battery backup unit, etc. Because some of these slow-data rate devices are a considerable distance (8-10 ft) from the computer I have an 8-port USB 2.0 hub that accommodates these and this hub has its own external power supply. This has a long USB cable that comes back to the close vicinity of the computer and plugs into a USB 3 hub, see below.

Closer to the computer are still more peripheral devices that are not particularly demanding of high data rates, but are a mix of USB 2.0 and 3 devices. These are serviced by a 7-port, externally powered USB 3 hub that is plugged into the Mini via a USB port on the Mini. The 8-port "slow" hub is daisy-chained into that "close" hub as I said above.

A second close hub is plugged-into one of the two Thunderbolt ports and it is nearly crippled with respect to its USB 3 ports - they work sometimes but mostly don't. The TB hub has other ports for SD card, HDMI, etc, but I have not tested them as I have been preoccupied by the USB issues.

Finally, the second Mini TB port is used by external HD box, the Mercury Elite. The Mercury Elite box is not interfaced to the Mini via a hub (ugh!) but rather it is direct to a TB port - that's the only way to get decent disk transfer speeds.

I just added a 4TB Toshiba HD to the Mercury box a few days ago and that's about when boot times began to stretch-out. Unfortunately, I did some other changes about the same time that may have had some effects on boot time issues. I used an SSD in the Mercury box to build an external clone of my internal SSD to be used as an emergency backup boot device and I test-booted from that external SSD. It worked and while it was a slow boot, I was not then aware of the external non-Apple SSD Boot issue and just noted that it was an annoyance to look into later. ***Under all other conditions (I.e., when not needed for an emergency boot = virtually never) I always boot from my internal SSD.*** Thus, according to my further reading of other's troubles with long boot times **when booting from non-Apple external SSDs,** my situation does not seem to fit their conditions.

To make things *more* confusing, last night I ejected the external SSD from my desktop (i.e., unmounted that disk - just to see if having on the desktop was somehow a problem) and, voila, this AM the Mini booted very quickly, even though, as expected, the external SSD re-mounted along with all of the disks in the Mercury box. I will do more testing to see if this "good behavior" persists. And also , as expected, there was no change in the USB situation (why would there be? - I'm just grasping at straws, here).

Hi, I am hoping someone can please help me. I can't seem to get my external monitor to stop flickering anytime I try to use it, after upgrading to MacOS Monterey. I have spent hours on the phone with Mac support and no one really has been able to help. I have a MacBook Air M1 - and have resorted to just plugging it and unplugging it, not a sustainable solution.

I am a student starting classes again on Tuesday. We are online because of covid, meaning it's really important that I have a working computer monitor at home. In my 20 years of owning exclusively Apple products, this is the first issue that is causing me to seriously reconsider my commitment to their devices/OS - and I really have no idea what to do at this point other than buy a windows computer or Chromebook.

Thanks,

Matt

Matt, it may be the cable - you seem to have plugged and un-plugged it several times, but did you do it at both ends (i.e., the monitor side, too)?

If that does not work, try another HDMI port on the monitor (if it has another one).

If that does not work, borrow or buy another HDMI cable and try that - you may have one around the house used for TV or something else that you can snag for a test.

Finally, test the monitor itself - plug it into another computer (even if it is not yours - say a friend's) using the same cable you are using now - how is that?

Let us know if any of that works, helps isolate the problem, or if it is still a problem of unknown origin.

Thank you so much for the really quick response! I should have mentioned in my original post that I unfortunately have tried those tactics (When I was working with Apple Help to eliminate all the other possible errors back in Nov/Dec). In addition to trying a different ports on the monitor, I also tried

• 4 different USB hubs (to eliminate MY hub as the error source),
• a simple HDMI-USB-C adapter (to see if it was ALL hubs)
• With a friends (Non M1) Apple computer

I'm wondering if anyone has found a stable workaround yet?

Thank you again,

Matt

My hub was finally working with 12.2. I had to plug power cord into hub so webcam could directly use the one other USB-C port on my MacBook Air. I just upgraded to 12.2.1 and the problems started all over again: no matter what I do, the webcam doesn't work! Deja vu all over again! Come on Apple! Everyone has this problem, or a variation of it, and they've had it ever since 12.0!

Just got the 12.2.1 Monterey update and my computer is now useless with my set up at work. USB C dock no longer works. I can't use my monitors, keyboard or mouse. If apple doesn't come up with a fix like by next week, I'm dumping my mac and getting a PC. I can't do what I do on a lap top alone. If I dump my macbook pro, I'll also dump my iphone. Apple... Please fix this issue. I have way too much money invested in you.

Does anybody have any news about this issue? Since I upgraded to Monterey, my hub (Apple multiport USB-C, HDMI and USB-A) stop working for USB-C. I went to Apple store and they change my hub for a brand new one and did not fix it. My cables are all from Apple. I have a Macbook Air 2020 M1, running Monterey 12.2.1, but I tested the hub in a iMac 27” Intel running Monterey 12.2.1 and the result is the same. With Big Sur I did not have this issue. And it is very, very annoying ….

Thanks!!

I can not use USB-C on the hub with external drive or power. It is just dead. I can only use USB-A and HDMI from the hub. Same thing on iMac Intel. I have already tried different cables. Nothing. USB-C simply does not work. When I unplug the hub and use directly on the Macbook Air M1 or iMac Intel, everything works just fine. Hope next 12.3 Monterey fixes this annoying issue.

Apple Released Something called Every Saver in Ethernet and USB C ports! To over come that on Ethernet is to go into Network System Preference pane and Hardware tab and set a manual setup to turn of Energy saver on Ethernet!

There is no setting in the hardware tab for that, only speed, duplex, and MTU. And whether I set them manually or automatically makes no difference. Even with all of these set manually, USB Ethernet adapters (part of a dock or stand-alone) seem to work correctly for a while and suddenly stop working altogether. The system still shows them as connected in the preference pane (they are green and do have an IP address) but when trying to send any traffic over them, nothing is being sent out (as one can also see by the lights of the port). The only way to get Ethernet working again is then by disconnecting and reconnecting the adapter or the entire dock. Then they work again for a while. It's not related to the adapter being idle, actually the opposite is true: They stop working usually after a larger data transfer. If rarely used at all, they work way longer. Again, the adapter works perfectly reliably on PCs as well as Intel Macs running Big Sur.

Possible !

4 of 14 days gone to experiment and hope / wait for a point update to Monterey and it will fix the issue - roll the dice