Powered USB Hubs

[alzone]

I have a bit of a problem with my USB ports on my laptop (HP DV5-1010tx).  They all work fine (tested) but when I plug in my head-set with mic, the power to my X52 cuts out.

I'm thinking that with the laptops measly power supply the combination of USB mouse, X52 joystick and throttle, Saitek Pro Pedals and the head-set prove too much for it.

Would a powered USB 4-port hub solve this problem by suppling independant (of the laptop) power to the things that draw a lot of power.

Thanks for any help anyone may have.

Al

Edit:  Oddly enough when I plug in my portable hard drive it all works OK.  Hmmm.  The above may not be a solution.

[Maurice_King]

Irrespective of what the OS and the Laptop is you really should be using a Powered Hub simply due the the main board power delivery.

You may find the Head set and the X52 are using the same IRQ as well and this will cause a conflict, I don't know whether this would be averted by the use of a powered hub, but I believe there is some port translation happening in mine.

Reason  my Phone and it's software will not run through the hub even though it is detected fine, but plug it into a USB on the PC itself she's all good..

[alzone]

Thanks Maurice.

I went out and bought a hub anyway as I needed one to tidy up my cables and to free up some ports.

Sadly it didn't resolve the problem.  I think I may have changed something somewhere - I just can't remember what it may have been - as it did work originally.  I have being tinkering a lot with my new OS (Win7RC64).  

I think I might just do a full clean install.  I want to partition my hard disk; as good as an excuse as any.  Besides with Win7RC64 it's fairly quick and painless.  Oh well, it keeps me off the streets!  

Thanks again.

Al

[Maurice_King]

I think I might just do a full clean install.  I want to partition my hard disk; as good as an excuse as any.  Besides with Win7RC64 it's fairly quick and painless.

You don't need to d a complete reinstall to partition things and I doubt that that will resolve you current situation.

what I would consider though is to refresh the actual mainboard drivers for your USB Hub (this is the onboard controller) and other peripheral controllers.

That may be where you issue resides or it may be your mainboard is having a conflict between USB I and USB II devices.

As for a rebuild  yes but you might find you will have many issues time wise and updates etc, I'd get a new drive and carefully copy things to it and separate your Programing from your "C:\" and then image your "C:\" for security then you can start mucking around with a rebuild if you must, this way if something screws up you have your image to restore from. The "Windows Restore" might have been good once but is a bit of a joke these days due to far superior software for the purpose being available.

[alzone]

Thanks again, Maurice.

Tried the above but no joy.

I might have a sleep on it - I am always amazed the amount of times an answer has come to me in the morning!

Cheers,

Al

[Dean (PC Aviator)]

Not sure about the newer Operating Systems, but in Windows XP, there is a setting which allows the computer to switch off USB devices to save power. By default this is ON! It needs to be switched off... This is how you do it in XP (off memory)...

Control Panel > System > Hardware > Device Manager > expand Universal Serial Bus Controllers...

Now, for ach entry titled "USB Root Hub" in the list, highlight it > right click > Properties > Power Management > remove the tick from "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power". Now the USB port wont be disabled if power runs low...

Again, not sure if the latest OS has same feature but worth a look.

Hope that helps