Driver & usb problems, please help

[Petesbar]

Hi, my Xp seems to have lost the ability to find drivers for any thing i
attach to my usb ports, even a simple flash drive. Anybody got any idea
why and how I can re-install or re-set it so it can locate or instate
the drivers,
Thanks hugley
Petes

 

[Elmo]

Hi, my Xp seems to have lost the ability to find drivers for any thing I
attach to my usb ports, even a simple flash drive. Anybody got any idea
why and how I can re-install or re-set it so it can locate or instate
the drivers,
Thanks hugley
Petes

You might try these sites:

General USB troubleshooting in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310575

Troubleshooting for USB drives
http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbtrouble_e.html

 

[Anna]

Hi, my Xp seems to have lost the ability to find drivers for any thing i
attach to my usb ports, even a simple flash drive. Anybody got any idea
why and how I can re-install or re-set it so it can locate or instate
the drivers,
Thanks hugley
Petes

Petesbar:
Here are some USB troubleshooting tips we've been lately promulgating. Hope
it will be of some help to you although I recognize not all are relevant to
your particular situation. Item #9 may be of particular interest to you.

1. Access Disk Management and see if the USB device is listed. If so, and
there's no drive letter assigned, see if you can assign a drive letter to
the device.
2. If the USB device is listed in Disk Management with an assigned drive
letter, right-click on its listing and select Explore from the submenu.
Hopefully, Windows Explorer will open and the device will be listed.
3. Connect the USB device *directly* to a USB port on the computer, not via
a USB hub. Try different USB ports should your computer have multiple ports.
4. Avoid using a USB extension cable.
5. Try connecting a USB device (that does not contain an auxiliary power
supply) to a USB port both before and after the boot operation.
6. Where a USB (or Firewire) external HDD is involved, access Device
Manager, highlight the Disk drives listing and click on the Action menu item
and then the "Scan for hardware changes" sub-menu item. Do the same in Disk
Management > Action > Rescan disks.
7. Try alternate powering on/off methods. If the USB device contains its own
power supply, try booting up with its power on, then try powering on only
*after* the system has booted to a Desktop.
8. Try a different USB cable.
9. In the USB controllers section of Device Manager, uninstall all the USB
controllers listed and reboot.
10. If the device in question is a HDD which you installed in a USB
enclosure, jumper the USB external HDD as Master (or Single if the HDD is a
Western Digital disk). A number of users have reported that jumper
configuration corrected their non-recognition problem. In my own experience
it didn't seem to matter how a USB external HDD was jumpered. But it may be
worth a try.
11. If the device in question is a USB external HDD, first check out the HDD
with the hard drive manufacturer's diagnostic utility. If it checks out OK,
and you can remove the HDD from its enclosure (without voiding any
applicable warranty), do so and install the HDD as an internal HDD to
determine if there are problems with the drive.
12. If the USB device is connected to a USB 2.0 PCI card, try changing the
PCI slot to which it's currently connected to another one.
13. Access the website of the manufacturer of the USB device to determine if
there's any firmware update or info re the problem you're experiencing or
there's any possibility that the USB enclosure itself might be defective.
14. Determine from the manufacturer of your motherboard whether there's a
BIOS upgrade affecting USB device recognition.
Anna

 

[Jim Cladingboel]

Anna, some time ago I asked you to identify the driver you use for your
external HDD. I'm still having problems with XP refusing to change the
driver on my external HDD. It will only allow me to use an MS driver
dated 01/07/01, Version 5.1.2600.0, detailed as:
"USB\VID_04A9&PID_170D&MI_02\6&28E12C9A&0&0002"
This is despite having several USB 2.0 drivers available in the "Universal
Serial Bus controllers" section of the Control Panel.
Please advise, thanks,

Jim.

 

[Anna]

Anna, some time ago I asked you to identify the driver you use for your
external HDD. I'm still having problems with XP refusing to change the
driver on my external HDD. It will only allow me to use an MS driver
dated 01/07/01, Version 5.1.2600.0, detailed as:
"USB\VID_04A9&PID_170D&MI_02\6&28E12C9A&0&0002"
This is despite having several USB 2.0 drivers available in the "Universal
Serial Bus controllers" section of the Control Panel.
Please advise, thanks,

Jim.

Jim:
In virtually every situation involving the connection of a USBEHD in an XP
OS, no auxiliary driver needs to be installed by the user since it's the XP
OS that provides the driver. This is assuming the XP OS includes SP1 and/or
SP2. The MS driver you refer to is one of those drivers.

The reason I say "virtually" is because a very few motherboards did provide
a driver for USB 2.0 capability and required the installation of that driver
(which was provided through the motherboard's installation CD) for such,
even with an XP OS. In our experience the affected motherboards were few &
far between - I'm not aware of any such motherboards being produced within
the last three years or so.

Now there have been firmware updates from some of the manufacturers of USB
external enclosures which accounts for my reference as indicated in item 13
above.

Although it's remotely possible, I really don't think the problem you're
experiencing involves a driver issue. I can't recall the specific problem
you've been having - is it a non-recognition of the USB device issue?

I really don't know what else to suggest other than providing the
troubleshooting "tips" we put together.
Anna

 

[Jim Cladingboel]

Jim:
In virtually every situation involving the connection of a USBEHD in an XP
OS, no auxiliary driver needs to be installed by the user since it's the
XP OS that provides the driver. This is assuming the XP OS includes SP1
and/or SP2. The MS driver you refer to is one of those drivers.

The reason I say "virtually" is because a very few motherboards did
provide a driver for USB 2.0 capability and required the installation of
that driver (which was provided through the motherboard's installation CD)
for such, even with an XP OS. In our experience the affected motherboards
were few & far between - I'm not aware of any such motherboards being
produced within the last three years or so.

Now there have been firmware updates from some of the manufacturers of USB
external enclosures which accounts for my reference as indicated in item
13 above.

Although it's remotely possible, I really don't think the problem you're
experiencing involves a driver issue. I can't recall the specific problem
you've been having - is it a non-recognition of the USB device issue?

I really don't know what else to suggest other than providing the
troubleshooting "tips" we put together.
Anna

Anna,
Thank you, but MS have Article 892050 which talks about a situation like
mine and goes on to discuss a'Hotfix". However, they don't seem to actually
have a working hotfix ready to be downloaded. My problem is that the XP
Wizard will _never_ allow any other driver to replace the one I detailed
above, not even the USB 2.0 driver supplied for my Asus mobo. I studied
your tips, but nothing there was able to improve my situation. My external
HDD works fine but only at an 8MB/sec transfer rate. Should I try deleting
all the 18 USB entries in DevMan and reboot with the external HDD switched
off, then switch it on and see what happens? It's about the only thing I
haven't yet tried, apart from a BIOS upgrade. I do have SP2.

Jim.

 

[Anna]

Anna,
Thank you, but MS have Article 892050 which talks about a situation like
mine and goes on to discuss a'Hotfix". However, they don't seem to
actually have a working hotfix ready to be downloaded. My problem is that
the XP Wizard will _never_ allow any other driver to replace the one I
detailed above, not even the USB 2.0 driver supplied for my Asus mobo. I
studied your tips, but nothing there was able to improve my situation. My
external HDD works fine but only at an 8MB/sec transfer rate. Should I
try deleting all the 18 USB entries in DevMan and reboot with the external
HDD switched off, then switch it on and see what happens? It's about the
only thing I haven't yet tried, apart from a BIOS upgrade. I do have SP2.

Jim.

Jim:
So I take it your problem - if indeed it is a problem - is that the data
transfer rate between your internal HDD and your USB external HDD appears to
be extremely slow for a USB 2.0 device. Is that it, i.e., there's no USB
non-recognition problem involved here, right? And, of course, there's no
system-generated message that you're using a USB 1.0 - 1.1 device, right?

If that's the case...

Setting aside your reference to a 8 MB/sec data transfer rate, could you do
this? Create a folder on your internal HDD that contains 1 GB of data or
more (preferably involving scores of files) and time (min/sec) the transfer
of such to your USBEHD. Let's see the results in "real-life" terms, OK?

And yes, as I suggested in item 9 of the "troubleshooting tips" above,
deleting all the USB controller entries in DM and rebooting sometimes
resolves the problem. It's usually immaterial whether the USB device is
powered on or off during the subsequent boot.

And as I also suggested in item 14, you should check for a BIOS upgrade
affecting USB issues.
Anna

 

[Petesbar]

Petesbar wrote:-
Hi, my Xp seems to have lost the ability to find drivers for any thing
I
attach to my usb ports, even a simple flash drive. Anybody got any
idea
why and how I can re-install or re-set it so it can locate or instate
the drivers,
Thanks hugley
Petes-

You might try these sites:

General USB troubleshooting in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310575

Troubleshooting for USB drives
http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbtrouble_e.html

Cheers Joe,
the troubleshooting for USB drives website came up trumps, all sorted
and realtivley painless!!

Thansk heaps. XX

 

[Jim Cladingboel]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Anna" <[email protected]>
Newsgroups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support
Sent: Friday, November 24, 2006 1:55 PM
Subject: Re: Driver & usb problems, please help>

Jim:
In virtually every situation involving the connection of a USBEHD in an XP
OS, no auxiliary driver needs to be installed by the user since it's the
XP OS that provides the driver. This is assuming the XP OS includes SP1
and/or SP2. The MS driver you refer to is one of those drivers.

The reason I say "virtually" is because a very few motherboards did
provide a driver for USB 2.0 capability and required the installation of
that driver (which was provided through the motherboard's installation CD)
for such, even with an XP OS. In our experience the affected motherboards
were few & far between - I'm not aware of any such motherboards being
produced within the last three years or so.

Now there have been firmware updates from some of the manufacturers of USB
external enclosures which accounts for my reference as indicated in item
13 above.

Although it's remotely possible, I really don't think the problem you're
experiencing involves a driver issue. I can't recall the specific problem
you've been having - is it a non-recognition of the USB device issue?

I really don't know what else to suggest other than providing the
troubleshooting "tips" we put together.
Anna

Jim:

So I take it your problem - if indeed it is a problem - is that the data
transfer rate between your internal HDD and your USB external HDD appears to
be extremely slow for a USB 2.0 device. Is that it, i.e., there's no USB
non-recognition problem involved here, right? And, of course, there's no
system-generated message that you're using a USB 1.0 - 1.1 device, right?

If that's the case...

Setting aside your reference to a 8 MB/sec data transfer rate, could you do
this? Create a folder on your internal HDD that contains 1 GB of data or
more (preferably involving scores of files) and time (min/sec) the transfer
of such to your USBEHD. Let's see the results in "real-life" terms, OK?

And yes, as I suggested in item 9 of the "troubleshooting tips" above,
deleting all the USB controller entries in DM and rebooting sometimes
resolves the problem. It's usually immaterial whether the USB device is
powered on or off during the subsequent boot.

And as I also suggested in item 14, you should check for a BIOS upgrade
affecting USB issues.
Anna

Anna:
You are correct. data transfer is slow; USBs are recognised, and there is
no system-generated message that I'm using a USB 1.0 - 1.1 device.
Following you suggestion, and without making any other change to my DM or
BIOS, I transferred a backup of my entire Drive E - 23 major folders +
hundeds of sub-folders and 1,000s of files.
Total size = 1,905,408 KB. Transfer time to external HDD 4 minutes 26
seconds.
I calculate that at a transfer rate of 7.16 MB/second.

What would you suggest?

Thanks, Jim.

 

[Anna]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Anna" <[email protected]>
Newsgroups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support
Sent: Friday, November 24, 2006 1:55 PM
Subject: Re: Driver & usb problems, please help>
So I take it your problem - if indeed it is a problem - is that the data
transfer rate between your internal HDD and your USB external HDD appears
to
be extremely slow for a USB 2.0 device. Is that it, i.e., there's no USB
non-recognition problem involved here, right? And, of course, there's no
system-generated message that you're using a USB 1.0 - 1.1 device, right?

If that's the case...

Setting aside your reference to a 8 MB/sec data transfer rate, could you
do
this? Create a folder on your internal HDD that contains 1 GB of data or
more (preferably involving scores of files) and time (min/sec) the
transfer
of such to your USBEHD. Let's see the results in "real-life" terms, OK?

And yes, as I suggested in item 9 of the "troubleshooting tips" above,
deleting all the USB controller entries in DM and rebooting sometimes
resolves the problem. It's usually immaterial whether the USB device is
powered on or off during the subsequent boot.

And as I also suggested in item 14, you should check for a BIOS upgrade
affecting USB issues.
Anna

Anna:
You are correct. data transfer is slow; USBs are recognised, and there is
no system-generated message that I'm using a USB 1.0 - 1.1 device.
Following you suggestion, and without making any other change to my DM or
BIOS, I transferred a backup of my entire Drive E - 23 major folders +
hundeds of sub-folders and 1,000s of files.
Total size = 1,905,408 KB. Transfer time to external HDD 4 minutes 26
seconds.
I calculate that at a transfer rate of 7.16 MB/second.

What would you suggest?

Thanks, Jim.

Jim:
It is a bit slow, but not abysmally so. The data transfer rate works out to
about 415 MB/min (if my math is right!). That *does* indicate you're at
least *not* working at USB 1.1 speeds. It appears that you're definitely
working in a USB 2.0 environment. But it *is* somewhat slower than we would
wish and normally obtain with a USB 2.0 external HDD.

Using a variety of different USBEHDs with different PCs (different
processors & PATA HDDs) we usually obtain copying speed (from internal HDD
to USBEHD) in the range of 650 to 880 MB/min - sometimes a little slower;
sometimes a bit faster. We've also experienced data transfer rates similar
to the ones you've been getting but it's not always clear why this is so.

We have found that there's a decided improvement in data transfer rates -
about 15% to 20% - when using SATA-II HDDs in a USB enclosure designed for
SATA HDDs. We've been consistently obtaining data transfer speeds of better
than 1 GB/min with these devices (and better still when using direct
SATA-to-SATA connectivity!).

I really don't know how to advise you. If you have other HDDs at your
disposal and there's no problem installing them in your USB enclosure then
that would be something to try. Also, if you could get your hands on another
USB enclosure and see if there's any significant difference in data transfer
rates. Other than that you may just have to live with your present
situation. As a practical matter it doesn't sound too terribly onerous. I
assume you're using your USBEHD as a storage/backup device and as such it
doesn't get the intense use of your internal boot drive.
Anna

 

[Jim Cladingboel]

Jim:
It is a bit slow, but not abysmally so. The data transfer rate works out
to about 415 MB/min (if my math is right!). That *does* indicate you're at
least *not* working at USB 1.1 speeds. It appears that you're definitely
working in a USB 2.0 environment. But it *is* somewhat slower than we
would wish and normally obtain with a USB 2.0 external HDD.

Using a variety of different USBEHDs with different PCs (different
processors & PATA HDDs) we usually obtain copying speed (from internal HDD
to USBEHD) in the range of 650 to 880 MB/min - sometimes a little slower;
sometimes a bit faster. We've also experienced data transfer rates similar
to the ones you've been getting but it's not always clear why this is so.

We have found that there's a decided improvement in data transfer rates -
about 15% to 20% - when using SATA-II HDDs in a USB enclosure designed for
SATA HDDs. We've been consistently obtaining data transfer speeds of
better than 1 GB/min with these devices (and better still when using
direct SATA-to-SATA connectivity!).

I really don't know how to advise you. If you have other HDDs at your
disposal and there's no problem installing them in your USB enclosure then
that would be something to try. Also, if you could get your hands on
another USB enclosure and see if there's any significant difference in
data transfer rates. Other than that you may just have to live with your
present situation. As a practical matter it doesn't sound too terribly
onerous. I assume you're using your USBEHD as a storage/backup device and
as such it doesn't get the intense use of your internal boot drive.
Anna

Anna,
I uninstalled every USB device in DM, restarted the PC - and found myself in
the same situation as before, with the same five-year-old MS driver!
I then flashed my BIOS. Same nil result. I really don't know what else to
try.

I don't have access to any other HDDs or EHDDs.

Yes, my USBEHD is just a storage/backup device but it would and should work
at a much higher speed if it were not for the MS "Wizard". It is not a
facility, it's a gatekeeper!
This is certainly a problem that MS should tackle. I moved from WinME
(where I had the same problem) to XP because, I was told, XP had USB2.0
drivers. Nobody told me they couldn't be fully accessed.

Thank you for all your efforts on my behalf,

Jim.

 

[Jim Cladingboel]

Anna,

Just as a matter of interest, I thought that a miracle had occurred. As I
set up Acronis to create an Image, a message appeared in the notification
tray.
It said my Mass Storage Device will work faster if you use a different
port - click here.
I duly clicked and saw a dialogue box headed "The USB Mass Storage Device is
a Hi-Speed and will function at a reduced speed when plugged into a
non-Hi-Speed port." [as if I didn't know...]

Below, it stated: "Recommendation: Disconnect the USB Mass Storage device
from its current port and then connect it to one of the ports on the hub
shown in bold type"
I duly made the change - obviously intended to move the MSD from a mobo port
to my USB 2.0 PCI Host card.

Unfortunately, the nett result was nil! Still 7-8 MB/second.
But it was fun while it lasted!

Jim