Back after a year.

Just installed a new Ubuntu Kernel and my front panel USB 3.0 ports won't read flash drives, now. The USB (pain to get at) ports on the back of the case work o.k. (they are USB 2.0). The front panel ports are live because the drive flashes when I put it in.
The new kernel is version 3.2.0-64.
Don't see any others reporting this yet on google. My Mobo is Asus Sabertooth 990fx. Good luck to anyone else updating to this kernel.

Power to usb has nothing to do with driver for chipset. Put old kernel back and see what chip it is using maybe. Then boot to new kernel and fix it to add in or black list out some driver.

Thanks for the reply.
My kernel update was a security update, so I un-installed the old kernel.
I have tried blacklisting certain things (uas) suggested elsewhere on the web in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf, no luck.
I also tried GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=”acpi=force irqpoll” in /etc/default/grub (also someone else's idea), no luck.
Compiling separate kernel modules for xhci_hcd and ehci_hcd seems a bit extreme (another idea suggested elsewhere).
I caved and got a usb extender for the back of my case. I probably need to upgrade to the next LTS ubuntu version.

Guess you could boot to a live media and see if it works. If so then take note of the driver used and lsusb data.

Thanks for the reply.
I actually gave up and installed 14.04 LTS 64-bit. My usb 3.0 sure works now.
I don't think I quite understand whether kernel modules and drivers are different things. I ran lsusb, couldn't use it for anything.