[violethigh]

Just tried using itunes with all my songs on an external hard drive and it's pretty obvious that my hard drive is only running at 1.1 instead of 2.0. It's running at normal speed in XP so it's not an issue with the hard drive.

I know it's probably an issue with the drivers but I have tried updating them in device manager but it says the driver is up to date.

I'm also pretty sure it was running normal speed up until quite recently on vista but I can't remember what I did that has caused it to run slow.

Any ideas? This is driving me mad as it's sooo slow. Thanks!

[danewiren]

I don't know if this is the case with Vista, but I have had the experience where the USB port(s) get dumbed down if a USB 1.1 device is attached. In other words, HDD works at 2.0 speed. Plug in an old scanner or printer - HDD now only works at 1.1 speeds. ** dw

[berabi]

I too am having pretty strange performance with USB devices in Vista and like violethigh, I have tried the same drive in Windows XP Pro and the drive is performing as it should. To give you an idea as to just how bad the drive is performing, my old HP Pavilion which is a PIII 500MHz w/256MB PC100 RAM can access the drive and transfer files quicker over it's USB1.1 interface than my shiney new Dell Inspiron. I think that this is awful and I've had Dell looking into it, but I've been teaching them more about Vista over the phone than they have been helping me to resolve the issue. Now trying with Microsoft's support and will keep you updated if I get anywhere. If someone has already resolved this issue - PLEASE POST THE SOLUTION AS IT'S DRIVING ME UP THE WALL!!!

[JeannieB360]

I have a new HPa6130n with Vista Home Premium. It has 2 USB ports in the front and 4 in the back, as well as a firewire port on the front and on the back. I have an external hard drive that has both USB 2.0 and Firewire. It works just fine with either connection on either of my older XP machines.

On the Vista machine, if I hook it up via firewire, I don't see the hard drive. If I hook it up by any of the USB ports, I get a warning that it can run faster if I hook it up to a hi-speed port (and, believe me, if I leave it the way it is and try to back up my computer to the external drive, Acronis estimates that it will take several DAYS to do it!)

I HAVE been able to get it to work like a real USB 2.0 drive, tho, by plugging a USB 2.0 4 port hub into one of the front or rear USB ports on the PC, then plugging the external hard drive's USB cable into a port on the hub! Then I can back up my entire internal hard drive to the external drive in a little over an hour.

I'm NOT a tech - just fairly computer literate and have learned more techie stuff than I ever wanted to know in self-defense (I used to be a business application consultant living 'on the road' with extremely poor support from the home office for my laptop).

I've been trying to work with HP support via 'live chat' on this issue, and I think I actually know more than some of the support people. I've uninstalled drivers and re-installed them, and even went through attempting to 'recover' to a restore point about 4 days after I purchased the computer 7/4/2007 (the restore didn't work and suggested I try a different restore point. I'll try that another day!). One of the problems is that when I 'live chat' with one of the HP people, I inevitably wind up at a point where I need to restart the computer and lose the 'live chat' connection. The last couple of times, though, I was able to ask for a 'session id' for the chat, so when I reconnected after my reboot - and it's always someone else, of course - I can refer them to the 'session id' so that they can read the transcript of the previous 'chat'.

So here's what I've seen with the device manager when I plug the ext. drive directly into one of the USB ports: I see 2 Mass Storage Devices, one of which is my drives F, G H and I, which apparently are for the 'card reader' built into the front of the PC for SD, CF, memory stick, etc. The other Mass Storage Device is my external drive, labelled J.

I also see 2 USB Root Hubs, and the properties on one, advanced tab, says it's 'high speed' and it's connected via the Standard Enhanced PCI to USB Host Controller; the other one says 'full speed', via the Standard OpenHCD USB Host Controller.

If I plug in my 4 port USB hub after stopping the external hard drive and disconnecting it, I now see only one Mass Storage Device, and I see a USB Generic Hub that it claims is 'high speed'. And, as I said before, if I hook the external drive up to the PC through one of the hub's ports, it acts like a full USB 2.0 connection - 480 mbps - instead of the slower 12 mbps connection.

So, this has been my two cents - maybe it will help someone else, or maybe someone has a 'real' solution!

Thanks in advance!

[Noyb]

Ya'll ... Welcome to the TSG forum .... I've had that problem before (in XP)

Try unplugging the external USB ... turn on the external ... then plugin the USB (hot)
This is not a solution ... but it might work and tell you something.
Be sure to use safe disconnect hardware before turning off the USB external.

[JeannieB360]

I tried that again just now - same result; I get the warning that it can perform faster if it's plugged into a high speed port.

[Noyb]

But it works high speed after a Hub ???

[berabi]

Hi Noyb & JeannieB360,

I've spent many hours on the phone to Dell technical support with no joy on this matter. I never had this problem with my previous computer (a Rock Quaddra T-64) when running Vista, but interestingly enough, this was running a Turion setup and thus not running an Intel USB controller. I think that the problem lies within the drivers for the chipset as it's not something inherant to every computer running Windows Vista, nor does it happen on this computer I'm having the problem with when I use the latest XP chipset drivers and Windows XP.

Unfortunately, as is the case for most problems like this that I'm seeing more and more people suffer with, neither Dell nor Microsoft are taking responsibility for the problem and will not endeavour to help the customer as it's much easier to throw the problem elsewhere. I've also tried contacting Intel directly but as Dell are the OEM's of the motherboard, Intel refused to speak to me.

I have found that if I use a short USB cable (no longer than 0.5m) I can get USB 2.0 performance but using any cables longer than that yields pretty damn awful results (as I mentioned before, sub USB 1.1 performance as my old PIII machine gets better from the drive). I also have found the same results with the Firewire port on my machine as Jeannie mentioned - I'm glad that finally this problem is arising more!

I think that Intel need to be made aware of this issue as the XP chipset drivers give superior performance on the same machine but I'm loath to bother with going back to XP as some of the shiney features of Vista will be missing (and yes, I've become a bit squidgy and gotten used to some of them )

If anyone has any idea of a way that we can bring this to Intel's attention without them pulling out the OEM excuse card, please do reply to the post as I'm sure that this is driving more people that just us three up the wall!

[Noyb]

Maybe it is a drive issue, but I'm not sure.
Back when I had this slow problem with one of my several USB Enclosures .. using XP ..
I reformatted and reloaded the external HD.
This seemed to solve the problem for a while.
I had a hunch that this was caused when I shut down the external without safely disconnecting it.

[berabi]

Hi Noyb,

Ordinarily I would agree but I've already explored that avenue and can't get any other computer to give me the same issues. In your case, you may have had the drive set up for fast performance and not fast removal as XP OS's and beyond have this feature and thus don't need to be safely removed before unplugging the USB cable.

I'm not sure about Jeannie's problems, but it also ended up dropping a connection on a short cable during a ROM flash on my O2 XDA Exec (HTC Universal) and left me just with a bootloader screen. I thought I was going to have a bery expensive paperweight but luckily fixed it using my good ole' PIII machine!

I'm still thinking chipset drivers - going to look into connections with Intel this week to see what I can find out.

Will keep all posted

[Noyb]

Hummm ... Never really messed with this setting.
Alway been afraid to change things that are working.
Any recommendations for the preferred setting for a USB external ??

[JeannieB360]

Originally Posted by Noyb

But it works high speed after a Hub ???

Yes, it still worked as a high-speed usb 2.0 disk when I plugged it into the 4 port USB hub instead of directly into one of the ports in the PC.

[JeannieB360]

Originally Posted by berabi

Hi Noyb & JeannieB360,

I've spent many hours on the phone to Dell technical support with no joy on this matter. I never had this problem with my previous computer (a Rock Quaddra T-64) when running Vista, but interestingly enough, this was running a Turion setup and thus not running an Intel USB controller. I think that the problem lies within the drivers for the chipset as it's not something inherant to every computer running Windows Vista, nor does it happen on this computer I'm having the problem with when I use the latest XP chipset drivers and Windows XP.

Unfortunately, as is the case for most problems like this that I'm seeing more and more people suffer with, neither Dell nor Microsoft are taking responsibility for the problem and will not endeavour to help the customer as it's much easier to throw the problem elsewhere. I've also tried contacting Intel directly but as Dell are the OEM's of the motherboard, Intel refused to speak to me.

I have found that if I use a short USB cable (no longer than 0.5m) I can get USB 2.0 performance but using any cables longer than that yields pretty damn awful results (as I mentioned before, sub USB 1.1 performance as my old PIII machine gets better from the drive). I also have found the same results with the Firewire port on my machine as Jeannie mentioned - I'm glad that finally this problem is arising more!

I think that Intel need to be made aware of this issue as the XP chipset drivers give superior performance on the same machine but I'm loath to bother with going back to XP as some of the shiney features of Vista will be missing (and yes, I've become a bit squidgy and gotten used to some of them )

If anyone has any idea of a way that we can bring this to Intel's attention without them pulling out the OEM excuse card, please do reply to the post as I'm sure that this is driving more people that just us three up the wall!

Well, as I said before, I'm not a techie, so I have no idea what motherboard/chipset came with my new HP a6130n. But here's what the spec said for 'hardware':
Hardware
Base processor
Athlon 64 X2 (B) 5000+ 2.6 GHz (65W)

*
2000 MT/s (mega transfers/second)
*
Socket AM2

Chipset
GeForce 6150SE nForce 430
Motherboard

*
Manufacturer: ECS
*
Motherboard Name: MCP61PM-HM
*
HP/Compaq motherboard name: Nettle2-GL8E

One of the HP techs had me re-install the chipset 'stuff', and the link he supplied me brought up an installer from Nvidia. That didn't make sense to me, because I thought Nvidia was just for graphics, but in retrospect, it seems this has to do with the motherboard chipset.

So I'm naively assuming that my problem has nothing to do with either Dell or Intel, even though it seems to be the same problem you're having with your Dell PC with an Intel chipset. So does this point you in a different direction?

[JeannieB360]

FYI - I found out that the firewire chipset is VIA VT6307 controller chip. I went to the VIA website to look it up, and am about to join their 'forum' so I can post my problem about not seeing the external hard drive if I hook up via firewire. A post in their forum says the drivers are supplied with VISTA, and my driver is up to date, according to the device manager on my machine. I'll post further when/if I receive a reply in the VIA forum.

[JeannieB360]

This is most bizarre, indeed! My USB problem has gone away with no special action on my part! I played around a few times today with the firewire problem, then moved the external drive over to one of my XP machines. Later, I moved it back to the VISTA machine (where I had also re-plugged in my USB printer), and this time, when I plugged it directly into one of the VISTA machine's USB ports, I did not get the low speed warning. I tried again with a couple of other USB ports, and it's working like it should with USB 2.0.

The only other thing I've done in the last 24 hours between seeing the slow speed problem and the problem going away was to set up the properties on the device driver for the external drive to optimize performance rather than quick-disconnect, and a couple of other reboots on the Vista machine for various reasons.

I'm confused!