USB 2 on an old system

[Kevin]

I have an old pc I built some years back with a DFI AK70+ motherboard
and Athlon 750 mHz processor running Windows XP.

WIth the increase of devices I'm using on USB (printer, external
drive, thumb drives, digital camera, etc) I figured it was time to
ugrade from the mobo's integrated USB 1 (or was it 1.1?
regardless...).

I got a new USB PCI card and installed it with no hassle. Most of the
devices work fine on it too... in fact all of them do work (and are
recognized at USB 2 transmission rates), except for the thumb drives.

When I insert the thumb drive, windows acknowledges that a device has
been added, but it doesn't assign a drive letter to the drives (yes,
this happens on multiple different drives, all 1 GB), and when I open
Disk Management, it shows the drive. However, after manually
assigning it a drive letter, it still doesn't open in Windows
Explorer. The only workaround I've found is right clicking the drive
in Disk Management and choosing to Explore. When I do this, it shows
the drive's contents for a moment before relocating to "My Computer."
However, I can then press Back to view the contents.

You can see why this is a pain.

So I talked to MS support thinking there might be a hotfix for XP to
solve the problem, but after a myriad of attempts at fixing the
problem, the support concluded that it was a hardware problem with my
motherboard just being "too old." It sounded like a cop-out to me.

However, I recently ran Burn-In-Test and it reported that all of the
USB ports failed the test.

So what's the deal? The PCI card works for most devices, but not
thumb drives. I wouldn't think it'd matter that the mobo has an older
version of USB because it now has a USB 2.0 card that's doing the
work.

Any ideas, or am I SOL for having an old mobo?

 

[Paul]

I have an old pc I built some years back with a DFI AK70+ motherboard
and Athlon 750 mHz processor running Windows XP.

WIth the increase of devices I'm using on USB (printer, external
drive, thumb drives, digital camera, etc) I figured it was time to
ugrade from the mobo's integrated USB 1 (or was it 1.1?
regardless...).

I got a new USB PCI card and installed it with no hassle. Most of the
devices work fine on it too... in fact all of them do work (and are
recognized at USB 2 transmission rates), except for the thumb drives.

When I insert the thumb drive, windows acknowledges that a device has
been added, but it doesn't assign a drive letter to the drives (yes,
this happens on multiple different drives, all 1 GB), and when I open
Disk Management, it shows the drive. However, after manually
assigning it a drive letter, it still doesn't open in Windows
Explorer. The only workaround I've found is right clicking the drive
in Disk Management and choosing to Explore. When I do this, it shows
the drive's contents for a moment before relocating to "My Computer."
However, I can then press Back to view the contents.

You can see why this is a pain.

So I talked to MS support thinking there might be a hotfix for XP to
solve the problem, but after a myriad of attempts at fixing the
problem, the support concluded that it was a hardware problem with my
motherboard just being "too old." It sounded like a cop-out to me.

However, I recently ran Burn-In-Test and it reported that all of the
USB ports failed the test.

So what's the deal? The PCI card works for most devices, but not
thumb drives. I wouldn't think it'd matter that the mobo has an older
version of USB because it now has a USB 2.0 card that's doing the
work.

Any ideas, or am I SOL for having an old mobo?

The use of a PCI USB2 card, isolates the "too old" hardware from
the picture. An old BIOS may fail to properly set up the card
during POST, but if the hardware is recognized once in Windows,
then it should work. Data will be DMA transferred into system
memory, by the USB card, and it is possible the motherboard
chipset has a really terrible DMA performance. The record,
as far as I know, is an old AMD chipset that could only
manage 25MB/sec under certain circumstances. (And that should
cause a graceful degradation, and not a total failure.)

If I had to buy a $10 USB PCI card, I'd want one with a
NEC chip on it, for best compatibility. VIA chips would be
further down my list.

In Windows, when a USB device is enumerated, the appropriate stack
is used to control it. There are a certain number of standard
stacks that are built in. USB Mass Storage would be one of them.
There could be USB functions which are not standardized, and
in that case, a driver may assist the device to full function.

Various versions of Windows have different levels of support for
USB. If you were using Win98, then problems would be expected.
Some third party packages sometimes help with Win98. With WinXP,
if you have at least SP1, then you should be in reasonable shape.
SP1 gives you a USB2 built-in driver.

I don't really know what a "burn-in" test is, unless it is
some repetitive usage of an interface element on the USB
device, in the hopes of uncovering packet errors or something.

In terms of sites with some info on USB, the first one is good
for device issues. The second is for "housecleaning", by removing
USB elements from Device Manager, so the OS can discover them again.
Since your problems seem to be at the file system level, "housecleaning"
is likely not the answer to your problems.

http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbtrouble_e.html

http://www.usbman.com/Guides/Cleanup Device Manager Safe Mode.htm

This is an example of an actual USB test device. It isn't an
actual analysis device (capable of checking the signals
coming from the PC), and is more of a loopback type device.
That means the PC sends a packet, and the device sends it
right back to the PC. The PC software is then used, to see
how many of the packets are in error. I haven't read any user
experiences on this product, as to how thorough it is.

http://www.passmark.com/products/usb2loopback.htm

Paul

 

[Kevin]

The use of a PCI USB2 card, isolates the "too old" hardware from

the picture.

That's what I was thinking.

If I had to buy a $10 USB PCI card, I'd want one with a
NEC chip on it, for best compatibility. VIA chips would be
further down my list.

Mine in fact has a NEC chip. Originally I picked up a cheap (and I
mean CHEAP!) USB 2 card with a VIA chip and it did not play nice with
my system, causing all sorts of fatal errors. $10 more got me a much
better card with a NEC chip.

Various versions of Windows have different levels of support for
USB. If you were using Win98, then problems would be expected.
Some third party packages sometimes help with Win98. With WinXP,
if you have at least SP1, then you should be in reasonable shape.
SP1 gives you a USB2 built-in driver.

Yeah, actually better USB support was one of the main reasons I
originally upgraded to XP. I'm up to at least SP2... I might even
have SP3 installed.

I don't really know what a "burn-in" test is, unless it is
some repetitive usage of an interface element on the USB
device, in the hopes of uncovering packet errors or something.

Burn In Test is an application that tests various parts of your system
(I had it for testing RAM).
http://www.passmark.com/products/bit.htm

Although now that I look at it, the software may have been expecting a
loopback device (like the one you linked to, made by the same company)
to be hooked up to the ports and that's why they all "failed." I'll
run that again and get the specifics of what it says.

In terms of sites with some info on USB, the first one is good
for device issues. The second is for "housecleaning", by removing
USB elements from Device Manager, so the OS can discover them again.
Since your problems seem to be at the file system level, "housecleaning"
is likely not the answer to your problems.

http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbtrouble_e.html

http://www.usbman.com/Guides/Cleanup Device Manager Safe Mode...

Thanks for the links... I'll check those out tonight.

//Kevin