My mother board in a mini-ATX type and supports 'olde worlde' USB onboard. It has two ports of the back plus internal connectors for a couple of front panel ports.

I have two question really. The first concerns the fact that I recently bought a new case and ever since in put everything in it the front panel USB ports lose the device at irregular intervals. The device just loses power and you have to unplug and plug it in a again to make it work. The ports on the back of the board remain unaffected throughout. Any ideas why this might happen? The only difference between this ase and the old one is that on each USB connector one of the black earth wires is in a seperate connector where all the others are joined together.

My second query is about the aforementioned card. I want to add some USB ports to my machine and am looking at bying a PCI card to do this. If I buy a USB 2.0 card can I run that at the same time as the 1.1 on the board with no ill effects?

Sorry for 'War and Peace' :o)