Using USB ports causes computer to freeze while new graphics card

[Guest]

I have recently bought a new graphics card (Club 3D GeForce 6600 AGP card,
256Mb) for my computer (Packard Bell IMedia 1507, Intel Pentium 4 3.06Ghz,
Santiago motherboard, 1GB RAM). My old graphics card was a PCI card. When I
install my new graphics card in the computer it is recognised by windows upon
restarting and the drivers install correctly, the card seems to function
properly and Device manager says all is well. But while the card is
installed the instant any device is plugged into any of my USB 2.0 ports
(e.g. Ipod, flash drive, wireless adaptor) the computer freezes without any
error messages or noises and has to be forcibly restarted. This also occurs
if anything is plugged into the drives while windows is loading up, the
screen instantly freezes.

I tried removing the card and everything worked again, and reinstalling it
and experienced the same problem so I'm sure it's the card that's causing
problems. Has anyone had any similar problems or have any idea of what could
be the problem? could it possibly be something to do with power?

 

[Joel]

Are these usb ports front panel ports or backside ports when you have the
problem? I bet they are the front panel. If so, try the backside ports to
see if you have the same problem.

You do need to go into bios and make sure you have your card set for AGP and
not pci and you need to change your Aperture settings to at least 128 and
even try 256. Turn off Fast Write in the AGP bios setting. I do not know
what motherboard you have, so I am just throwing this stuff out there.

As a last resort, you could also turn the agp card down to 2x in bios to see
if that makes a difference. Again, I am assuming your bios allows that.

What is the wattage of your power supply? You did not mention that, and
these AGP cards do consume alot of the psu. But I would think Dell would
have put in a psu with enough power to accommodate your agp slot. A psu with
350 watts is ok with your card assuming you have added no other hardware to
the computer since you bought it. A psu with at least 400 watts would be
preferable.

Check to make sure you have the latest driver for your card. Make sure your
screen refresh rate is not too high; anything over 70 is probably not
necessary. Turn your video card setting down from High Quality to Optimal
performance (something my card allows, but yours might be worded
differently).


There is one more thing to consider that has nothing to do with your video
card. Sometimes when new hardware is added to a computer, especially with
front panel usb, XP can get confused in the registry. That is, the last time
you pulled out your usb device it might not have been removed in its
location in the registry. So when you plug it in again, the screen will
freeze because there is already something showing in that registry location
where you are trying to put the new device. This is hard for me to explain.
However, I remembered I had to type something into the Run command to get
all the old registry locations fixed. I just cannot remember what. If the
above solutions do not help, then post again under another heading to find
out what I am talking about with the registry confusion.