Paul Furman wrote:[color=blue]
> 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:
> [url]http://forums.techarena.in/vista-help/921053.htm[/url]
> [ 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...
>[/color]

Try this. Worth a shot.

[url]http://www.online-tech-tips.com/computer-tips/usb-device-not-recognized/[/url]

fatsteve wrote:[color=blue]
> Paul Furman wrote:[color=green]
>> 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:
>> [url]http://forums.techarena.in/vista-help/921053.htm[/url]
>> [ 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...[/color]
>
> Try this. Worth a shot.
>
> [url]http://www.online-tech-tips.com/computer-tips/usb-device-not-recognized/[/url][/color]

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
[url]www.edgehill.net[/url]
[url]www.baynatives.com[/url]

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