DV5000 USB problems

Okay, I'm really kicking myself right now for buying another Windows PC and not getting a Mac. I mean, really, really, truly kicking myself. I shouldn't have been so impatient waiting for the MacBooks and I regret it more and more with every stupid little thing Windows does. But, theres nothing I can do about it now. I'm stuck with Windows until OS 10.5 comes out.

Anyway, I have an interesting USB problem with Windows. I have an HP Pavilion DV5030us. You know, Turion64 ML-37 @ 2GHz, 1GB of RAM, 100GB HDD, ATi Xpress 200M w/128MB dedicated memory, 3 USB 2.0, 1 Firewire, Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 (UGH!).

My problem is that I can't get iTunes to sync with my iPod, nor can I get Windows to even write a lot of data to the drive. It's a 2G iPod mini 4GB. Battery is still just as good as the day I bought it, nearly a year and a half ago, and it's in almost perfect condition. I've never had any problems with it until THIS PC came along. I never tried to sync with this system until a few days ago. Before that I had been using my desktop Windows PC. It's a custom built system I put together some time ago. The iPod works absolutely flawlessly with that system. It has no problem at all. Syncs the entire 3.73GB in just a few minutes over USB 2.0.

But this laptop just won't do it. In iTunes it's incredibly slow. Sometimes it gives an I/O error stating that the drive cannot be written to or read from. Same with Windows Explorer when trying to drag and drop files. However, like I said, the iPod works 100% flawlessly on the desktop. One time, the laptop went so far as to corrupt the iPod and wouldn't recognize it. So I connected it to the desktop and voila! It worked perfectly and I was able to restore and resync.

I have literally tried everything I can think of. Theres no options in the BIOS to change USB settings. I have uninstalled all USB devices within WIndows, and then reconnected each device one by one so Windows could reinstall the drivers. I tried syncing with no other USB devices connected. I tried with all connected. I even tried reinstalling Windows and only installing iTunes and the iPod software and that didn't work either.

However, the USB ports work fine with other devices. I have the eHome receiver for Media Center hooked up and it functions just fine. My Bluetooth dongle for my wireless keyboard and mouse works just fine. I can write and read data from USB thumb drives, the HDD inside my HP Photosmart printer, even if I leave the memory card inside my camera I can read and write data from that.

But like I said, theres no problem with the iPod. It functions flawlessly with my desktop. So I don't know what the problem is! Can anyone help me? Does anyone have any kind of idea? Thanks to anyone who can help

 

Have you been keeping up with the various Windows Updates? My USB HDTV tuner was having some stuttering problems until recently, depending on how many USB devices I had plugged in (something about USB bandwidth reservation). Now it's back to perfect. The only thing I can think of is the last big round of Windows patches overwrote the brain damage.

The other thing to try is disabling USB power saving. In Device Manager, go to the USB Root Hubs and see the Power Management tabs.

Normally I'd say check for newer drivers on the HP downloads page but I don't see anything interesting.

Another possibility: get a powered USB hub and plug your iPod into that. I don't know how ATI would have messed up being fully bug compliant with the iPod's USB implementation but that fixed my problem with my USB Skype phone being detected as USB 1.1 instead of USB 2.0.

 

I tried disabling the power saving features for USB, but that didn't work either

I've tried going through Apple's website. They have so much help stuff there that it's amazing, really. Espicially compared to HP. But theres absolutely no problem at all with the iPod.

It works on my desktop with XP Home. I have all the same software installed on my desktop and laptop. So it would be very strange for there to be some kind of software conflict. And I booted into Knoppix on the laptop and was able to copy several gigs of data to the iPod without a problem.

So I'm completely stumped. I might have to get a powered USB hub. I need more USB ports anyway. I just really wish I had noticed this problem during the 15 day return period. Anyway, thanks for your help. Any more ideas would be greatly appreciated