USB erratic after update a couple weeks ago

Durn thing has a mind of its own. Whole groups of USB ports turn
themselves on & off every 10 minutes now.

This seems to be a possible explanation/fix:
http://forums.techarena.in/vista-help/921053.htm
[ Re: USB stops working after recent Windows Update
It is more of a hardware problem believe it or not. The thing is that
some motherboards have internal watchdogs to make sure that USB ports
are not overloaded since they consume on average 500 mA of current. This
mechanism of kicking off some additional USB ports also involves the OS,
or course. What perhaps happened was that after some updates the demand
on the MB went up because of some additional work Vista needs to do now
perhaps on a short term basis (like for a few minutes) and it just trips
over the threshold.]

What I did is... I had 2 USB hubs daisy chained in one port of the
'puter, so I plugged each individually into a port... at least some of
the probs seem to have resolved. Of course I had it set up that way for
a reason... some devices only worked plugged direct to the 'puter but
who knows, maybe that's not a problem now? Er, yeah, still a problem but
some more port switching seems to resolve partly. USB voodoo...

--
Paul Furman
www.edgehill.net
www.baynatives.com

all google groups messages filtered due to spam

Paul Furman wrote:
> Durn thing has a mind of its own. Whole groups of USB ports turn
> themselves on & off every 10 minutes now.
>
> This seems to be a possible explanation/fix:
> http://forums.techarena.in/vista-help/921053.htm
> [ Re: USB stops working after recent Windows Update
> It is more of a hardware problem believe it or not. The thing is that
> some motherboards have internal watchdogs to make sure that USB ports
> are not overloaded since they consume on average 500 mA of current. This
> mechanism of kicking off some additional USB ports also involves the OS,
> or course. What perhaps happened was that after some updates the demand
> on the MB went up because of some additional work Vista needs to do now
> perhaps on a short term basis (like for a few minutes) and it just trips
> over the threshold.]
>
> What I did is... I had 2 USB hubs daisy chained in one port of the
> 'puter, so I plugged each individually into a port... at least some of
> the probs seem to have resolved. Of course I had it set up that way for
> a reason... some devices only worked plugged direct to the 'puter but
> who knows, maybe that's not a problem now? Er, yeah, still a problem but
> some more port switching seems to resolve partly. USB voodoo...

So, it's not solved... that was a partial workaround which lessened my
problems slightly. Anyone else experiencing these problems? Any more ideas?

--
Paul Furman
www.edgehill.net
www.baynatives.com

all google groups messages filtered due to spam

Paul Furman wrote:
> Durn thing has a mind of its own. Whole groups of USB ports turn
> themselves on & off every 10 minutes now.
>
> This seems to be a possible explanation/fix:
> http://forums.techarena.in/vista-help/921053.htm
> [ Re: USB stops working after recent Windows Update
> It is more of a hardware problem believe it or not. The thing is that
> some motherboards have internal watchdogs to make sure that USB ports
> are not overloaded since they consume on average 500 mA of current. This
> mechanism of kicking off some additional USB ports also involves the OS,
> or course. What perhaps happened was that after some updates the demand
> on the MB went up because of some additional work Vista needs to do now
> perhaps on a short term basis (like for a few minutes) and it just trips
> over the threshold.]
>
> What I did is... I had 2 USB hubs daisy chained in one port of the
> 'puter, so I plugged each individually into a port... at least some of
> the probs seem to have resolved. Of course I had it set up that way for
> a reason... some devices only worked plugged direct to the 'puter but
> who knows, maybe that's not a problem now? Er, yeah, still a problem but
> some more port switching seems to resolve partly. USB voodoo...
>

Try this. Worth a shot.

http://www.online-tech-tips.com/comp...ot-recognized/

fatsteve wrote:
> Paul Furman wrote:
>> Durn thing has a mind of its own. Whole groups of USB ports turn
>> themselves on & off every 10 minutes now.
>>
>> This seems to be a possible explanation/fix:
>> http://forums.techarena.in/vista-help/921053.htm
>> [ Re: USB stops working after recent Windows Update
>> It is more of a hardware problem believe it or not. The thing is that
>> some motherboards have internal watchdogs to make sure that USB ports
>> are not overloaded since they consume on average 500 mA of current.
>> This mechanism of kicking off some additional USB ports also involves
>> the OS, or course. What perhaps happened was that after some updates
>> the demand on the MB went up because of some additional work Vista
>> needs to do now perhaps on a short term basis (like for a few minutes)
>> and it just trips over the threshold.]
>>
>> What I did is... I had 2 USB hubs daisy chained in one port of the
>> 'puter, so I plugged each individually into a port... at least some of
>> the probs seem to have resolved. Of course I had it set up that way
>> for a reason... some devices only worked plugged direct to the 'puter
>> but who knows, maybe that's not a problem now? Er, yeah, still a
>> problem but some more port switching seems to resolve partly. USB
>> voodoo...
>
> Try this. Worth a shot.
>
> http://www.online-tech-tips.com/comp...ot-recognized/

Darn, that's a good one but it didn't last. Pull the power & it has to
reboot the motherboard. That did work and it reinstalled the drivers.

Lately it's the printer that konks out... maybe 20 minutes of computing
& I'll hear the usb boo-boop sound, with the device manager open I see
that one of the hubs now says Unknown Device. The printer isn't taking
any power so that trashes my theory in the first link above... before I
had a lot of trouble with an external sound card, and that has always
had various issues, plus it would just turn amost anything on & off like
the mouse, card reader...

It seems like USB has always been unreliable, I don't know why <sigh>. I
didn't have these problems till the latest vista updates a month or less
ago. Maybe a clean reinstall when windows 7 is ready...

--
Paul Furman
www.edgehill.net
www.baynatives.com

all google groups messages filtered due to spam