USBs and DVDs not working [ABANDONED]

[Keith]

I have an old desktop with an ASUS A7N8X motherboard to be renovated for a friend. 
It has XP loaded and is unbelievably slow.  At first I thought the slowness might be partly due to the age of the motherboard but the spec doesn't look too bad - although I might change the board for something better if she can afford it. 

The immediate problem is that I can't run a Linux Live USB or DVD as neither the DVD drives nor the USB sockets respond to any device.  I've tried setting the boot preferences to anything that seemed reasonable but it always boots into XP although the boot process indicates that it is booting from (for example) the DVD. 

I've checked the leads from the USBs and DVDs to the motherboard and all are placed securely in the right positions. 
The PS2 keyboard works but I don't have a PS2 mouse - I can use my USB mouse if I can get the Live USB/DVD working. 

Any advice for getting a Live USB/DVD working would be very welcome.
Thank you.

[Mark Greaves (PCNetSpec)]

For a USB stick, try setting the first boot device to USB ZIP-DRIVE, and enable Legacy USB support as mentioned here
https://www.motherboardpoint.com/threads/a7n8x-deluxe-booting-from-usb.11042/

Are you sure the DVD drive is working properly ?

[Keith]

Hi Mark.

DVDs
The only means of testing that I have is to try an old (single-layer) DVD, and neither of the optical drives respond – although that might be XP taking forever to stop accessing the HD and not getting around to it.  The drives are:
DVD ROM   SD-M17122  (July 2003)
DVD-R-RW  SD-R5112  (July 2003)  Toshiba (secondary slave)
They are connected correctly and it’s unlikely they are both dead. 

“USB controllers” set to V1.1 and V2.0, and I am using V2 USBs (how can I check this?)

I have set the USB legacy support and USB legacy mouse support to Enabled.  My USB mouse still doesn't work. 
I set the second & third boot devices to “CDROM” and “HDD0” respectively. 
For the first boot device, I tried:
USB-FDD
USB-ZIP
USB-CDROM
USB-HDD
but the POST always indicates it’s “booting from the CD-ROM” (empty) and boots into XP from the HDD. 

Please don't spend too much time on this, Mark, as I am happy to abandon it if necessary and put a new board in as the case and hardware are fine. 
Many thanks.
  Keith

[Keith]

Abandoned as the owner of the PC is willing to scrap it.
But thanks to all for trying to help.