USB hub replacement

[LwnmwnMan2]

I've been trying to figure out my Dell Studio XP 8100 running Windows 7 Home Premium and the USB issues.

For those that have been following along, I've determined that my USB goes to sleep, and then doesn't wake up without a hard power down and restart for the entire computer, then everything works fine, until it sits for 20-30 minutes, then you have to shut it all down again.

I can access the computer fine through LogMeIn, print, see the cursor move on the screen when I'm controlling it with the laptop, but the wireless keyboard, wireless (or wired) mouse or external hard drive all quit working until the reboot.

So, my question is, if I have everything unchecked in the power management settings, everything is unchecked to allow the computer to put the USB to sleep to save energy, can I put a new USB hub in the computer? Is this my last option, and will it end up changing anything, or will it just do the same thing?

If it does the same thing, I'm about ready to dump this computer, cause it's driving me nuts!

[upnorth]

If this started all of a sudden it could be a new driver came in with a windows update. I hate it when windows updates hardware drivers, there is a pretty high percentage of times where the drivers are wrong. I would look to see if you can roll back to a previous driver or go to the PC Vendors site and download their drivers and re install them.

One other thing I would try before you go too far on this is to make all your setting changes and immediately restart the PC. I have seen too many times where settings won't stick until you restart and if you have to power down it definitely will roll your settings back.

[Nick Kuhn]

You would have to change the motherboard, unless you can find USB ports that are connected to an additional USB controller on the MoBo. But this seems to be entirely a software issue, not a hardware (USB controllers these days are located on the northbridge, if the northbridge doesn't work then nothing works at all in the computer). There may be some power options in the BIOS that you haven't looked at. Perhaps you need to flash the BIOS as well.

[LwnmwnMan2]

I already tried updating the BIOS from Dell's HSOforum, but it states the BIOS is already current and won't reinstall.

[upnorth]

I think what Nick was referring to is setting in the BIOS not the version of the BIOS.

[LwnmwnMan2]

I entered my BIOS, but I didn't see anything that would pertain to my USB turning off.

[upnorth]

They are all a little different, not sure if there is something in there on yours. But there may be a power setting for the USB.

Another option, if you never tweaked the BIOS for anything you can reset it to factory defaults. I have had to do that twice in the last week because the WLAN card got turned off in BIOS for some reason. And believe me the people who had those laptops wouldn't know the difference between BIOS and DVD if it came up bit them on the nose. Good at what they do, but computer stuff is not that.