Jan 1, 2016 - I've managed to resolve this issue by flashing the firmware on the NEC uPD720200. Posting the answer here in case anybody else.
I have a socket 1366 motherboard with the X58 chipset, to be precise its the EVGA 131-GT-E767-TR LGA 1366 Intel X58 SLI 3 although this fix probably applies to other EVGA motherboards. Lots of you have tried the newest driver on the EVGA website, which is this one: 6-29-2011 USB 3.0 2.1.19.0 131-GT-E767 Win8/Win7/Vista/XP and it probably hasn't done you a bit of good, seeing as its nearly two years old.
There are NEWER VERSIONS OF THE DRIVERS AVAILABLE, but EVGA doesn't care enough about us to bother hosting them or even providing a link. But even worse, EVGA never mentions FIRMWARE, a little chunk of code that is flashed into the actual USB3 chip that resides on your motherboard. Sorry I can't post the URL's, because I'm a new user to the board and they limit new users ability to post URL's to stop spam. So you will have to do a little self-navigating. If you aren't stupid, it shouldn't be a problem. If you navigate to STATION-DRIVERS dot COM. Its a FRENCH web site, so a few words aren't in english but I'm sure you can fiigure it out.
![Nec electronics upd720200 Nec electronics upd720200](/uploads/1/2/4/2/124272309/156777820.jpg)
Once there, click onĀ 'DRIVERS, BIOS, FIRMWARES' Then look for 'Chipsets USB 3.0' and under that click on 'NEC/Renesas'. And here is what you are looking for. 20/08/11 The first three lines are all DRIVERS, and even the oldest of the three is newer than what EVGA sees fit to host. I downloaded the newest one, 2.1.39.0 and installed it, but it didn't work. (YET!) So then I checked the next group, which is FIRMWARE. I didn't know if my motherboard has a uPD720200 or a uPD720200a, so I thought I would try the one for the 200 first.
When I downloaded 3.0.3.4 and tried to install it, it refused to install, saying no hardware found. So I tried the top one, firmware 4.0.2.0, which is for the 200a version of the USB 3 chip. When I ran it, it told me to UNPLUG everything from the USB3 ports, which I did. Then it let me upgrade the firmware, and asked me if I wanted to reboot. My USB 3.0 ports now work PERFECTLY. It sucks that EVGA doesn't support us anymore.
And it sucks that its so hard to find UP TO DATE DRIVERS AND FIRMWARE. I saw others posting about Station-Drivers dot com and assumed it was one of those slimy web sites that want money to give you access. But station-drivers dot come is free, and the real deal! I hope this helps someone else, I have struggled for the past year with USB 3 devices on this motherboard, and its nice to have the ports working the way they were intended. Now I'm contemplating updating the firmware for both onboard RAID ports.
I hesitate because they currently work.but what if I can make them work better? Wdflyer.but I know some are disgruntled about it for some reason or another. Edit: Oh, I almost forgot, welcome to the forum! When ours works fine, we tend to blame the other guy with the problems. My USB3 port was always showing up in the device manager is not working, but I didn't think about it much until I got a USB3 external hard drive and a USB3 external card reader. It didn't work under Windows 7, nor Windows 8. I did a lot of searching on the web and on EVGA's forums and didn't see the information about station-drivers dot com until today, but nobody I saw mentioned updating the firmware and what the results were.
Knowing what I know now, if I searched for 'Renesas USB 3 firmware SLI3' I would probably find some results. But before today I never thought about updating the USB 3 firmware since I assumed (wrongly, it would seem) that was done when we re-flashed the BIOS and that the BIOS would have the newest version, or at least the newest stable version that was known to work.
This board is a couple years old, I'm pretty sure that most buyers of this board haven't tried to use the USB3 ports, so the fact they weren't working for a lot of us wasn't noticed while the board was current and thus supported properly by EVGA. I just think its sad that its too much trouble for EVGA to provide links to newer firmware and drivers.