Why can't Win Me can't recognize USB 2.0?

I installed a Belkin Hi-Speed USB 2.0 card on a Windows Me, Dell-made pc. Install & detection went fine, until the final step. That’s where my pc is supposed to detect & install the Belkin USB Hi-Speed Host Controller. Instead, the new hardware wizard appears, and calls the device a PCI Universal Serial Bus. I've tried every option with the wizard (let it find the driver; specify the location of the driver; pick from a list, etc.), but it just can’t find the hi-speed driver.

It DID detect & install the first things that Belkin’s instructions said it would, which were two NEC USB Open Host Controllers and two USB Root Hubs.

There are 2 factory installed USB 1.1 ports on the back of the pc, which work fine.

I’ve gotten help from Belkin via email and on the phone, and to put it very politely, they were no help. And there’s no troubleshooting of any kind in the stuff that came with the card, nor on their site.

Here’s what else I’ve done:

Installed the card in my other free PCI slot, which made no difference.

Updated the BIOS through Dell.

Tried to update the driver of the PCI Universal Serial Device from its location in Other Devices in device manager. Again, no matter how I did it, it couldn’t find anything hi-speed.

Any ideas? Could it be like the Belkin guy told me: “Sometimes this just happens” ?

 

I had a very similar problem recently with a modem in Windows98 (essentially same OS)

The modem installation went fine, but there was a PCI Communication Device that drivers were not installed for, and they couldn't be found anywhere. I tried driver cleaners to make sure I removed the modem before it, and nothing came to any avail. I was missing drivers for that one device.
However, even without the driver the modem worked flawlessly. I've since removed the PCI communication device from my system, and have had no problems.

My question to you is: does the USB card work without this driver?

 

Um, I feel kinda stupid saying this - I haven't tried it yet! I just assumed...

Let me try & see, and I'll post back.

 

OK, I plugged in my Maxtor external hard drive and I'm backing up the internal HD as I write this. It's working, but I'm pretty sure it's going at USB 1.1 speed, not 2.0. From what I understand, it should take less than a minute to do a full backup of a hard drive. It's been over 8 minutes, and only 360MB of 4.7GB have been copied.

That was a good suggestion, though... and thanks for making me realize that I needed to actually use the ports to see if they were working or not! Duh!

 

There may be some limitations due to your system. Essentially, the operation can only go as quickly as the slowest part. Please post your system specs (especially info on the components involved) so that we may more accurately address this issue.

 

Can you tell me how to post my system specs? I'm afraid I don't know exactly which ones are important, and how I should get them all in a list to post. I have Everest - should I use something from there?

 

Everest would be perfectly suitable! I haven't used it myself, but if there's an option to save the results as a pic, do so and post that, or if it doesn't you can use alt+prt scr to capture the window to clipboard, and paste it into paint and save it. There's no such thing as too much info.

Important specs are related to BOTH your hard drives. Internal and external. What speeds they run at, the sizes, etc. Again, don't be afraid to go overboard.

 

That's exactly what I was afraid of - going overboard. Everest has a LOT of info. Many, many pages of many stats, most of which I don't understand! But I'll sort through it and post back here as soon as I can.

Thanks for your help, BTW!

 

Mada_Milty,

I'm attaching the 1st page of an Everest summary report, because this site won't let me upload the full summary report. It's like 200 kb total, and although I tried to cut out all the stuff that looked irrelevant, I couldn't get it even close to being an acceptable size (97 kb I think). Maybe I'm not doing something right... I've seen people post pictures on these forums that were huge.

Anyway, I doubt this will tell you enough, but it's a start...

 

Great. Though, I'm afraid that it's Beer O'clock where I am, and I have to be mosying along home to dial up that I just can't be bothered to use. I'll have to have a look tomorrow, if nobody beats me to the punch. Have a good one, bud!

 

No prob... Thanks and remember, don't drink & mosey. Could be dangerous.

 

Hey everyone... Is there anybody out there who can offer advice? I'm still trying to get this problem solved...

 

This is just a stab in the dark, so there's a good chance that I'm wrong on this one, but it's worth a try.

First, remove the USB 1.1 ports. If you cannot remove it, go into your BIOS and disable it. Also remove your new USB 2.0 card.
Boot into safe mode and uninstall ALL of your USB stuff. You may want to try that driver cleaner program that everyone on here raves about. It's in the MajorGeeks download section....somewhere.
Reboot into normal mode and make sure all is well.
Put the new USB 2.0 card in your PC, and try to install the drivers again.

I'm not sure if it's possible to have USB 1.1 and USB 2.0 host controllers installed at the same time. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, I've never tried it before.

If this doesn't work (or isn't true), download the drivers from Belkin's site, and go through the add/remove hardware wizard again for the PCI USB in Other Devices or whatever. Don't allow Windows to automatically search for the best drivers, but instead point it directly to the INF file that will be placed somewhere on your system during the process of unzipping or installing the drivers from Belkin's site.

 

i do not know about the usb 2.0 thing but the backing up is because you only have a 800mhz cpu and 128 of ram

 

Ignore my "2.0 and 1.1 installed at the same time" reasoning. I'm a fool and cannot edit my post now.

But if you have a lot of free time on your hands, I'd try it anyways....just because I'm like that.

 

bubbles,

You're not a fool! I may go ahead & do what you suggested, but first, I'm going to test the speed of the new 2.0 ports with something other than a backup to my Maxtor external hard drive. That's because of what you just told me, david1. I was hoping someone would look at my specs & be able to tell me something definitive like that. So thanks (for the bad news!)

Oh, and bubbles, I already told the wizard exactly where to find the .inf files, and although it looked like it found them, when I clicked OK or Open or whatever, the wizard said it couldn't find them. Strange.

 

In Device Manager, and under USB, does it say "Enhanced" somewhere?

If it does, then you have USB 2.0, if not, then you have only 1.1.

 

he means this

 

No, I'm afraid it doesn't say "enhanced" anywhere. http://forums.majorgeeks.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

You mentioned on a different thread this past Sunday (I guess that's Monday down in the Land of Oz) that Windows XP doesn't support USB 2.0 without SP1... So I'm assuming Windows Me doesn't either, on its own. Did it get a SP that fixed this?

Oh, and to bubbles:

You said,

I'm a bigger fool - I just noticed the typo I made in the title for this thread. http://forums.majorgeeks.com/images/smilies/redface.gif

 

Windows ME, (or any Windows 9x) doesn't officially support USB 2.0.

That doesn't mean USB 2.0 won't work, but you need to supply drivers as ME doesn't have native support unlike XP with SP1.

 

OK, got it. My problem is that I'm supplying the drivers, but the computer can't see them.

I need to sign off for the evening, but I'll be back tomorrow. Thanks so much for any postings in the meantime.

~Megan