M1330 thinks its USB ports are not 2.0

Sometimes (random times) my m1330 will inform me that if I plug my WD 160gb harddrive into a 2.0 port, it can perform faster.
Whenever this happens, the computer does treat the port as a usb 1.1 (the transfer is really really slow... 4gb takes an estimated 2 hours)

I am forced to restart my computer for the computer to recognize that it does have usb 2.0 (the 4gb transfer then only takes about 2-3 minutes )

I contacted dell about this a while bet and they just told me to flash my bios with the bios on their website which I did and it fixed the problem temporarily.

Probably another vista problem since restarting the computer fixes this for a while.
So for now, whenever this problem occurs, I just restart my computer.

Any other m1330 owners have this issue?

 

Don't own it but could driver be the issue? The fact that it works intermittently makes me not think of the BIOS, ROM non corruptible and all.

 

It happened to me the once - I don't often use the USB but I distinctly remember it happening, and straight away wondered whether the ports aren't in fact USB2.0

No idea why it happened, I'm not too sure how to recreate it

 

Update: the problem just occured again

I checked my drivers and under the USB controllers, there's one of the "Standard Enhanced PCI to USB Controllers" that has a caution sign over it

When I double click it, the device status is:
"Windows has stopped this device because it has reported problems. (Code 43)

Click 'Check for solutions' to send data about this device to Microsoft and to see if there is a solution available."

Apparently I can't update it because it is the most recent version. And the rollback button is disabled for some reason... D:

This is really annoying. I hate having to restart everytime this problem occurs.
So it's something wrong with the driver...

 

Check here for the USB hotfix.

http://aaron-kelley.net/downloads/hotfix/

I don't think it was on Windows Update. I know that new Gateway laptop at Best Buy is having this problem. It's a Vista issue.

 

Hey tsteez, which one is the usb hotfix?

I tried:
Vista RTM October 1, 2007 941600 Cumulative update rollup for USB core components in Windows Vista

But it said "This update does not apply to your system"

 

Uninstall all usb devices and reboot let windows install them for you. If that doesnt work, reinstall the intel chipset drivers. If that doesnt work, try a different usb port.

 

Uninstall all?
I uninstalled the one with the caution sign on it...

I don't really know what I'm doing so I want to make sure that uninstalling all of them won't corrupt my computer or anything.

Right now, under "universal serial bus controllers" I have
-Generic Usb Hub
-Standard Enhanced PCI to USB Host Controller (X2)
-Standard Universal PCI to USB Host Controller (X5)
-USB Composite Device
-USB Mass Storage Device (With a caution icon....this must be my iPod..I just plugged it in to test if the computer still thought it had usb 1.0)
-USB Root Hub (X7)

What do all of these different controllers/hubs mean?
I have only two usb ports on my m1330 which are both 2.0 so I'm guessing the two controllers with the word "enhanced" in them are related to the ports...

 

Uninstall EVERYTHING under usb devices.

 

Ok, I've attempted to uninstall the things under the universal serial bus thing but...

Everytime I uninnstall something, windows automatically starts reinstalling it (it's in the notification area)

Here's what my usb thing looks like now (after attempting to uninstall a lot of these things)

-Generic Usb Hub
-Standard Enhanced PCI to USB Host Controller (X2)
-Standard Universal PCI to USB Host Controller (X5)
-USB Composite Device
-USB Root Hub (X7)

 

Right, do your best to remove them all, then reboot. If it reinstalls it right away skip that one. Just try to remove each one once.

 

Nizzy,

Hmm...I just tried that but the only thing that actually uninstalled was the first thing: Generic USB Root.

After I tried uninstalling the second thing: the enhanced controller, windows once again reinstalled everything (It even checked my webcam driver or something...)

I just restarted my computer, even though I didn't really uninstall anything..but I did get rid of the controller with the caution sign on it..

And as of right now, the usb 2.0 thing is working (Just plugged in iPod)

Now the thing is, will it stay fixed...because the problem just randomly comes about...

I appreciate you spending your time to help nizzy, I repped you

 

It might be the other way around: the USB controller thinks the hard drive is USB 1.1 not 2.0. They are backwards compatible such that a USB 2.0 host will downgrade to 1.1 if that type of device is detected.

I assume you have a separate power supply for the external hard drive, yes? Do you have another USB B (device) to A (host) cable to try? One thing that bugs me is I have many USB cables around, some were 1.1 and some 2.0, now I don't know which. The high speed USB 2.0 is tons more bandwidth (400MB/sec) than USB 1.1 full speed (12MB/sec). I wonder if maybe noise on the connection makes it think the slave is not high speed.

I find that overall USB is pretty flaky. Since it distributes power it is prone to all kinds of transients and some devices don't behave well. I have a brand new USB keyboard that now always produces the message "one of the usb devices has malfunctioned". I have also seen USB hubs that are basically low quality and cause USB enumeration problems (the part where device announces hey I am a USB device of type whatever).

I am guessing that this is not a software issue. Instead of rebooting try powering on and off the USB hard drive and see if that makes a difference.

 

Thanks for your input profcio.

The harddrive is a western digital passport portable hardrive, it uses the computer for its power source

It doesn't matter what I plug into the usb drive (hard drive, iPod, etc.)
When the m1330 thinks its usb ports are not 2.0, it treats it as so no matter what is plugged in..

As of right now, no problems with this ever since I did what nizzy told me to do...
I'll tell you guys if the problem starts again