Updating USB driver or fixing 2.0 ports

Factual Questions
1

My PC is a 5 year old desktop Dell 4600 running WinXP SP2.

I had it in the shop a couple years ago and the USB ports have since only worked as V1, not V2. Plus, sometimes things have misbehaved through a USB connection. I have vague misgivings about this part of my system.

What are some things I can do to make sure all my USB ports work as they should?

I found Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Device Manager > Universal Serial Bus controllers and there are 4 entries that look like “Intel® 82801EB USB Universal Host Controller - 24D2”, one entry called “USB Printing Support”, and four entries called “USB Root Hub”. For any of them I can open a Properties dialog and on its Driver pane there is an Update Driver… button, a RollBack Driver button, and two others. Would I be safe trying to Update Driver? I’ve heard of nasty things happening. I do have a non-USB keyboard and mouse.

Thanks for anybody who might enlighten me a bit!

2

Your PC is spec’d to have 8 USB 2.0 ports. You need to update the driver via the driver update applet. If you simply pull the driver the system may automatically re-install the 1.1 driver.

See How to fix USB not working with Dell XPS and Windows XP Professional

3

Astro, thanks - that certainly sounds like the right fix.

But the driver update applet says it can’t find anything newer than the drivers that are in place now, though I had it look on the Operating System Reinstallation CD that came with the PC, and had it look at Microsoft Windows Update. The only choices the applet gives me are to search somewhere else or to exit. I have a number of other CDs that came with the PC but they’re for specific applications, no “Driver” or “System” CD or anything like that (not that I know there is supposed to be one).

Also, the instructions at “How to fix…” say “Right click and choose Properties of one that says something about PCI bridge (I forget the exact name and after you fix the problem, this item goes away. If you aren’t sure, you try step 5 and 6 on all of the USB items in that list.)”

But I don’t have any mentioning PCI Bridge, just the ones I list above. I was just going to try them all, if it had worked.

Any further suggestions?

4

Couple more notes-

I see several hints that there should be a Drivers and Utilities CD somewhere, though haven’t found one.

On the Dell site, “USB driver” gets over 100,000 hits. The first couple hundred seem to have specific enough hints in them to say they aren’t mine.

5

Went searching and found what sounds like the right driver, and saved it to a folder, but when I browse to that folder with the Update Driver applet, the OK button remains grayed out.

Tried another approach. Found my Service Tag and fed that number to the Dell site and let it point me at the right driver, and ran the Install program for that driver, which seemed to put downloaded drivers into c:\dell\drivers folder for something else to collect them. Though, it also required rebooting, which you don’t need to do just to have the file saved to disk. It didn’t seem to install the driver where the driver would be needed, and my USB ports are still V1.

Tried Update Driver and pointing at the \dell\driver folders where the install program put things, but the OK button is still grayed out.

What is the meaning of a grayed-out OK button when browsing folders for Update Driver? Is it saying none of the files in that folder look right to it?

6

One thing I noticed on one of my old laptops is that the supposedly USB v2 ports would only operate in V1 mode. If you’re having no luck with the drivers, it’s very possible that it’s a hardware problem. But luckily, PCI USB ports are cheap, so if you really need one, go install it.

7

Yes but sometimes the OS can be faked out by an improperly attached driver and see the right driver as wrong. In these cases if you’re 100% sure you’ve got the appropriate driver you can force install it over the current driver. If I were in your shoes I’d just delete the entire USB driver chain and see what XP re-installs on reboot (remove all attached USB devices when doing this). If it just re-initializes your current 1.1 driver then you will need to force the correct install. Be aware that if you do re-initialize the USB bus some of your USB devices may need to be re-installed as they will be confused by the USB port switch.

As side note are there any oddball or out of the ordinary PCI cards installed on your PC?

8

>if you’re 100% sure you’ve got the appropriate driver
Hmm, I’m not. There seem to be drivers and installers that are supposed to install them and self extracting executables that are supposed to unfold into said installers, and I’m not clear how to tell the difference. So I’m not even sure exactly which file is a driver, let alone the right one.

>you can force install it over the current driver
How? I see an applet for installing drivers, whose OK button is grayed out when I point at the folder containing what I think is the right driver. How do I force this to work? Can I just copy the driver file into the right system folder? Do I have to make changes elsewhere to get it recognized or registered or pointed at or something?

>I’d just delete the entire USB driver chain
How do I do that? Can I just delete (or safely rename) files somewhere, maybe C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers? Or are they linked in some special way I have to mess with?

>are there any oddball or out of the ordinary PCI cards installed on your PC?
Not a one. The hardware is all exactly as Dell assembled it.

9

>If you’re having no luck with the drivers, it’s very possible that it’s a hardware problem.

The trouble I’m having with drivers is that I haven’t been able to replace the current driver with any other driver. So, I haven’t tried any other drivers, except in the sense of trying to install them and seeing that that option isn’t allowed.

The history of this machine is that I got some horrible virus problem a few years ago (in spite of using Norton Antivirus and AdAware and Spybot and a hardware firewall in my router and another one in my cable modem. I was just running system scan after system scan, finding and removing hundreds of problems each time, and not doing anything else. I gave up trying to fix it and took the machine to a local shop who reinstalled Windows, and at that time the ports became limited to V1. So, while a hardware problem seems unlikely, the link astro cites describes how reinstalling Windows on these machines fails to install V2 drivers for the USB, because of the way Dell set something up. This sounds completely consistent with the history and even expectable.

10

I finally found the Drivers and Utilities CD and ran its installation program which guided me through the Intel Chipset driver installation. Or at least I think it did. When it was finished I had an Intel Chipset Installation window open and a Dell Installation window open and neither of them seemed to have a Next button or offer anything that looked like a next step. I saw files being installed into c:\windows\system32\drivers and saw a c:\dell\drivers get populated. But the ports are still V1 and when I navigate to the Update Driver applet it lets me point at the CD or at the c:\dell\drivers folder but the OK button remains gray. Also, the c:\dell\drivers subfolders are populated with .cat files, but wouldn’t drivers have extensions like .dll or .sys or something?

It’s pretty hard to guess what these different players are up to, not having done this before, and it seems like some of what is happening is pretty close but nothing seems to quite do it. Any suggestions??? Thanks!

11

Have you tried deleting the highest level of the USB chain and seeing what the OS re-installs on re-boot?

Re forcing an install

Go to

Control Panel>System>Hardware>Device manager>Universal Serial Bus Controllers> right click on USB chain you wish to update and applet will pop up - Go to the Driver tab with Details-Update-Rollback-Uninstall option. Choose Update Driver-Install from location-Don’t search -

You can force driver override install from this point & the sytem might warn you that the hardware and driver are mismatched. If you are sure it’s the right driver ignore this and install the driver. If it’s not the right one there will be an “X” or exclamation point icon on the chain next to the hardware listing, and you will need to delete or rollback the driver to the previous driver.

12

>Have you tried deleting the highest level of the USB chain and seeing what the OS re-installs on re-boot?

How do I do that? What is the “USB chain”? How do I delete levels of it?

I’m guessing - I can navigate to a Computer Management box and select Device Manager > Universal Serial Bus controllers, and there is the following list:

Intel® 82801EB USB Universal Host Controller - 24D2
Intel® 82801EB USB Universal Host Controller - 24D4
Intel® 82801EB USB Universal Host Controller - 24D7
Intel® 82801EB USB Universal Host Controller - 24DE
USB Printing Support
USB Root Hub
USB Root Hub
USB Root Hub
USB Root Hub

I can right click on any of them and get the following mouse menu:

Update Driver…
Disable
Uninstall

Scan for hardware changes

Properties

I can also left click on Properties and get a dialog with five tabbed panes and various things in them.

Do you mean, I should left click on Disable or Uninstall on all these things? Or has this nothing to do with deleting levels of the USB chain? I’m just guessing at what you mean, here.

>Choose Update Driver-Install from location-Don’t search -

Right, that’s what I do, but the Choose Location dialog has a folder tree chooser pane and two buttons, OK and Cancel. I select the folder I want it to update from, but the OK button is grayed out. I can only Cancel or continue navigating to other folders. In fact, I have never seen the OK button not be gray. And, yes, I tried clicking on it anyway. No dice.

13

Let’s try someting else.

On the hardware tree/chain

Look in the “system devices” folder (right above the “Universal Serial Bus Controllers” folder " for the 82801EB PCI bridge. Does it have any markings by it like an exclamation point?

14

I had this problem after I did some hardware modifications, and it turned out that it was a BIOS setting that for some reason had reverted to USB 1. Check your BIOS setup for something like ‘Enable USB 2.0’.

15

>Look in the “system devices” folder (right above the “Universal Serial Bus
Controllers” folder " for the 82801EB PCI bridge. Does it have any markings by it like an exclamation point?

Astro, no, it doesn’t. There is an entry “Intel® 82801EB PCI Bridge - 244E”, and there are two other entries whose names include “Intel® 82801EB” and 22 entries total. None of them have a “!” or anything else that looks special. The Bridge entry points at C:\WINDOWS\system32\DRIVERS\pci.sys, which has the 8/4/2004 date.

A more complete list of what I have seen:

When I go in through Settings > Control Panel > Computer Management > Device Manager
> Universal Serial Bus Controllers, I have this list:

Intel® 82801EB USB Universal Host Controller - 24D2
Intel® 82801EB USB Universal Host Controller - 24D4
Intel® 82801EB USB Universal Host Controller - 24D7
Intel® 82801EB USB Universal Host Controller - 24DE
USB Printing Support
USB Root Hub
USB Root Hub
USB Root Hub
USB Root Hub

Selecting “Intel® 82801EB USB Universal Host Controller - 24D2” and going to Properties > Driver > Driver Details…, the “Driver File Details” box points to the following files:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\usbhub.sys
C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\usbport.sys
C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\usbuhci.sys
C:\WINDOWS\system32\usbui.dll

In fact all the “Intel® 82801EB USB Universal Host Controller - 24D*” also point at the same files.

For the entry called “USB Printing Support” there is only one driver,
C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\usbprint.sys

For the entries called “USB Root Hub” there are two driver files listed:
C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\usbd.sys
C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\usbhub.sys

The usbd.sys file has a modified date of 8/18/2001, while all the other files have a modified date of 8/4/2004. That second date is newer than the invoice date on my original order, 6/11/03.

I ran an installation program that was on the Dell Drivers and Utilities CD and it created a directory structure starting in c:\dell, with about 600 files in it, but mostly they are named *.cat. I tried looking through this with the driver update applet but didn’t find anyplace the OK button was useable. Somehow I got the impression that this installation program didn’t run to completion. It never said “Finished”, and I think it forced a reboot but after the reboot no other installation-like things started. There are files like \DIAGS\DIM32\A12-13\USB.MDM and USBUHCI.MDM on this CD with creation date 3/15/03, but no files with names containing usb of any other extension.

16

>Check your BIOS setup for something like ‘Enable USB 2.0’.

How do I do that? “Help” and “Norton’s Complete Guide to Windows XP” don’t seem to know…