USB interface suddenly very slow

I have a P3 550Mhz system, running Windows 2000 Pro SP4. I recently had to replace the hard drive which had failed. This was done by the tech at the local computer store, who also reloaded Windows.

System now works great. But recently i connected my digital camera thru the USB port to move some pics on to the hard drive. Now it is painfully slow, taking many minutes to copy just a few pics. Before the old hard drive crashed, this same operation would be complete in no more than a minute.

I've tested the camera and cable on a friend's system, and it works fine - so I don't suspect the camera.

Any ideas on what's changed to cause the USB performance to go so bad?

 

As a start I would make sure that DMA is enabled on the drive. Go to your device manager and make sure that DMA is enabled for the hard drives by right clicking on the IDE primary and secondary, selecting properties, and then advanced.

 

Here's an update to my problem:

Last week, my new hard drive crashed (only 2 months old!!). Still under warranty, I got system back with yet another new hard drive. This time, I loaded all the software myself.

So I'm back to Windows 2000 PRO SP4. Once again, the system is working great - except for my USB ports. Both my scanner and digital camera are running very slowly when compared to their performance a few months ago.

Other than a brand new hard drive, the only other significant change is the drive is formatted NTFS, because it's a bigger drive (80 MB). The older drive was 20 MB and formatted FAT32

The system is 4 yrs old, so would be USB 1.1. It almost feels like the interface is running at USB "low speed" (1.5 Mbit/sec) instead of "full speed" (12 Mbit/sec). Is that possible???

Looking at Device Manager, I have no problem areas. Under USB controllers heading, I have:

USB Root Hub - driver dated 19/06/2003
VIA USB Universal Host Controller - driver dated 19/06/2003

Could I have incorrect drivers?

I welcome any and all ideas. Thanks.....

 

Thanks PeteC for the suggestions. I will check for updated drivers.

Currently the driver installed for the VIA USB Universal Host Controller is from Microsoft (dated 19/06/2003). So perhaps I need to get the driver from VIA?

Here's another observation. If I'm looking at Properties for the same Univ Host Controller, and click the "advanced" tab, it displays the bandwidth consumed. When computer is idle, it says "system reserved" is 11%. If I then use the scanner (using a USB port), and keep clicking the "refresh" button as the scanning occurs, the 11% never changes. Would this be normal?

Thanks again.

 

There is no mention of a USB Enhanced controller in Device Manager.

My scanner is definitely USB 1, camera probably USB 2 (because it's fairly new). But regardless of that, I'm comparing my USB performance from a few months ago (which was pretty good) to today's performance (much slower). All that's changed is a new hard drive and a reload of Windows 2000 Pro.

My motherboard is a Tyan Tiger 133 (model S1834). The chipset is VIA Apollo Pro 133A.

When I go to the Tyan website looking for drivers, it directs me to the VIA website. From there, the recommended download is the VIA "4 in 1" driver, version 4.43, dated Oct 25/01. In other words, I would be installing drivers approx 2 years older than what's there now. I haven't done it yet, so am looking for opinions on whether this would help or hurt things?

Also, in other internet browsing, I've seen comments like "USB doesn't like to share IRQ's. My setup has IRQ 9 shared between the USB Universal Host Controller and "Microsoft ACPI-Compliant System ". Any problems with that?

Once again, thanks for past replies and I look forward to more ideas!!

 

Thanks again PeteC. I see you have the same reservations as I did about installing the VIA 4 in 1 driver. It's possible those drivers were used 4 years ago when the machine was brand new. That may be a last resort thing to try.

No not yet. But I plan to over the upcoming weekend.