Asus m4n98td evo - usb root hubs

[Nomad8459]

Hi, I have been doing an awful lot of reading about this but not finding any real solutions.

My device manager is showing 4 USB Root Hubs, 2 are running at High speed and having nothing plugged into them, and two are running at Full Speed and these are showing my devices that I have plugged in, these being an XBOX 360 controller, a USB wireless keyboard/mouse and my printer.

The controller and printer are plugged into the back of the machine where there are 6 ports, the USB keyboard is plugged into the front where I have two expansions that are plugged into two of the USB headers on the motherboard, 2 are from the actual case (coolermaster cm690II) and 2 are from an aero cool fan controller.

The device manger shows 2 enhanced usb drivers, and 2 open HCD drivers, but non of my equipment is running at High Speed only showing up on the Full Speed USB root hubs, this means they are only running at USB 1.1 rates.

When I plug my portable USB HDD in, it says that the device can perform faster, opens up and shows me two hubs both with six ports each.

Now there are six ports on the back of the motherboard and then there are 3 headers on the motherboard (which can take 2 ports each) so that is where the two sets of six are coming from, but why are non of my devices actually running at High speed even though Windows tells me that the USB HDD can run faster?

The device is terribly slow.

I have tried uninstalling from the device manager and rebooting, I have tried installing the latest Chipset drivers 15.56 Nvidia Nforce (980A) but the chipset dirvers do not specifically mention anything about USB, and the installed drivers for the USB are microsoft ones?

Please Help someone? Thanks

 

[PaulSoebekti]

Hi there. I took a quick look on the Asus site and it seems to me that the USB drivers are contained in the BIOS download. Do you have the latest BIOS on your system?

Paul

 

[Nomad8459]

Yep, latest BIOS is installed. Am hoping for a new one to be honest! This one is over a year old and it has some quirks....

Tried uninstalling the drivers again in device manager and it just reloads the Microsoft drivers and continues to show all my devices as running at full speed only rather than on the high speed ones.

I assume that the xbox controller will be USB 2, but I don't know.

 

[PaulSoebekti]

Hello. Based on the attachments, the USB hubs are properly loaded and functioning at USB2 specifications. The Asus M4N98-TD Evo onboard USB circuitry is: USB2 standard.

Is your USB harddrive- the newer USB3 standard, per chance? USB3 plugs are colour coded with a blue plastic separator. When they are plugged into a USB2 receptor - a message that it can perform faster will pop up (it presumes that you might have a USB3 hub elsewhere). USB2 plugs are colour coded with a white plastic separator.
Hope this helps.

Paul

 

[Nomad8459]

Hi, its USB 2.0 for sure, its quite an old portable HDD.

The attachment shows that there are four controllers, two each for OPEN HCD and Enhanced, as I said before everything I have plugged in no matter where, front or back is running on the OPEN HCD controllers which as you can see claim to be running at Full Speed only, not Hi- speed?? Have I got the two mixed up or what, is Hi-speed 12mbs and full speed 480Mbs??

My BIOS seems to suggest that Hi-speed is 480Mbs and Full speed is 12Mbs, I am getting confused, which is which??

Thanks for your help.

 

[PaulSoebekti]

Hi again. OPEN HCD refers to USB1.1 standard (12 Mbps). Enhanced is USB2 (480Mbps).

The Asus site indicates that the motherboard comes with USB2 outlets (it's backwards compatible).

Try this: download the latest BIOS driver from the Asus site and place it on desktop. Restart computer, press F8 repeatedly as soon as it restarts, and goto Safe Mode. Open Device Manager and uninstall the USB hub driver(s) by right clicking for a sub-menu.
Restart and goto Safe Mode again. Open Device Manager (an exclamation mark may indicate the missing driver) and install the Asus driver(s) by directing windows to the saved file on your desktop. Reboot into normal mode. Device Manager should have 'Enhanced USB Host Controller' listed (wording may differ, a host controller with the label "enhanced" indicates that a USB2 driver is in place.

Hope it helps.

Paul

 

[Nomad8459]

Hi, I tried uninstalling the OPEN HCD from the device manager and updating the driver manually to the Enhanced version, unfortunately it just said device failed to start and I could no longer use my keyboard, had to do do a system restore!!

The Enhanced controllers are there, it just doesnt seem to be using them which is a real worry, there is no mention of USB drivers in the 15.56 Chipset drivers nor are there any on the install disc except for some that are listed as being for Windows XP only.

In the BIOS, it has a few USB related things:

USB Functions - Enable/Disable
USB 2.0 Controller - Enable/Disable
Legacy USB - Auto - Enable /Disable
USB 2.0 Controller - Hi Speed/Full Speed

The BIOS "driver" is actually just a 1MB ROM file for the BIOS chip.

 

[PaulSoebekti]

Hi, sorry that you had to do a restore. The USB settings in BIOS should be set to 'Enable' and 'Hi Speed'.

I attached an article on USBs and its connections FYI.

Paul

 

[Nomad8459]

Thanks for that, so it sounds like these devices although USB 2.0 don't actually need all the bandwidth available and so therefore or being routed through the standard controller.

But it doesn't explain why My USB HDD wasn't routed through the High Speed when Windows itself said it could run faster! Its a strange one.

 

[PaulSoebekti]

Have you tried using different outlets? Try to move the slow hdd to a different outlet. Leave the performing ones where they are; it might be a matter of not having enough bandwidth.

Paul

 

[Nomad8459]

TBH, the only other thing on there is the USB keyboard, using one out of six slots!

The hard drive even has one of those Y usb cables.

 

[PaulSoebekti]

I have one of the early 2.5" enclosures (Vantek USB2) that came with two USB plugs (one mini-USB plug leading out of the enclosure - then it splits into two USB plugs). The transfer rate sometimes dropped and requires both USB plugs to be connected to come to its intended transfer rate. Do we have the same harddrive cable here, I wonder.
Sorry, I'm out of suggestions to help here.

Paul

 

[Nomad8459]

That's Ok, it was a long shot asking on here, all the devices are working properly except the hard drive seem to be working properly, but to be honest, it has always been a little tempremental anyway, but I would have thought with it being a HDD that it would require the Hi speed controller, the Hi speed controller was originally devised for HDD type things according to that document that you found.

i will live with it, it does recognise it and transfer data and I don't use it that often, but it just struck me as odd.