wacky USB ports
 

I just put my old AMD XP-M system back together again for my dad to play
solitaire and surf the internet. The PC has 4 usb ports at the back and 2 at
the front. It had no problem in the past. The only difference is I added a
wireless mouse, usb wifi, usb hand write board, and usb TV turner for him.

I believe it's either the OS or the ports can't handle the power to run the
devices. The wifi and the mouse hardly being detected by the PC. Well,
both devices have their lights flashing and I am sure the drivers are properly
installed. Sometimes, it will work magically, sometimes not.

The strange thing is the USB icon (the one that says "you might want to
connect to a usb2.0 port") pops up repeatly at the taskbar. Again, it doesn't
come up all the time.


I don't feel like formatting the HD, what are the possible reasons this shit
happen to me? any quick fix?



The taskbar icon is the same as the bottom icon shown (the one highlighted in yellow)
http://demo.dontcount.com/software/d...manager-02.jpg

simple, you're using USB 2.0 devices on USB 1.1 ports

the quickest fix would be to buy a PCI card with some USB 2.0 slots, my parents computer needed one and it was something like $15 for a 5 port one.

it has usb 2.0 for sure...I owned that machine until 2 years ago

What I'm thinking is that while you may physically have 6 USB ports, the system only has four usable USB ports. I remember some older machines in the past had this condition where two of the ports at the back use the same resources as two of the ports at the front... meaning you can use either the back two or the front two, but not both...

This is most likely the case. You may be correct in stating the computer has USB 2.0. There was a period where both were present on the same MB. You can see from your screenshot of Device Manager that you have two separate controllers. Most often the ones nearer the PS2 ports were the slower ones.

Why don't you specify the MB, since that is the topic of the discussion? You won't get the best advice unless you do.

it's Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe
used to be a flagship motherboard..

it says "USB Integrated 6 USB2.0 ports "

http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_I...specifications


if the port is not usb2.0 or not enough power, it will have a stable USB2.0 icon at the taskbar.
I have never seen a flashing usb2.0 =/

http://www.motherboardpoint.com/a7n8...ix-t13806.html

http://www.nforcershq.com/forum/a7n8...tml?highlight=

Dunno what to tell you...

Try swapping devices around to different USB ports maybe? What if you try a normal mouse?

How about removing all the USB devices and just plugging in the mouse?

I got an A7N8X kicking around somewhere. I'll boot it up and see if the USB on mine works and if device manager looks different to yours.

What Service Pack of XP are you currently using? You might try installing XP Service Packs.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/312370

I tried the above advices and unplugged all the usb devices.

I moved all the slower devices (write pad, usb fan, TV tuner) to a 3-in-1 usb hub, then
mouse and wifi on the rear ports.

It seems fine to me last night. Although the wifi still very slow when connecting up, I'll
try again tonight. Thanks


Note: I am using SP3 right now


2.0 or 1.1 it doesn't really matter. The problem is the flashing icon and won't detect the device