so close to tears....USB-problem w. i/o?? PLEEEASE HELP..

[Ekan]

Thank you for your time.
This is my last attempt, after this i do not know where to turn...

I have the Lycky-Star 6VABX2 Motherboard, running on W2000.
Connected to it's USB's, i have a Wacom Graphire (coordless mouse/pen drawing-pad) and i Sony dsc f505 digital camera and they are both behaving in strange ways.
The Wacom pad works for everytnig between 10 min up to an hour, but sooner or later it dies.
The camera can at it's best transfer about two images before an error message apperars, telling me something like: device E: is not available, due to errors in a i/o-unit.
I am not sure what it says in english versions of W2k, since i run the Swedish version, but my translation is close enough i guess...

This is a list of some of the actions i've taken in trying to solve the problem:

*Flashed to latest BIOS & drivers.
*Got all the latest drivers, VIA (4 in one & USB-filter driver), SONY & WACOM...
*Both the VIA Universal host controller & my Soundblaster Live! appears on IRQ 10, so i tried to detatch the soundcard to eliminate the possibility of a conflict.
*Tried all kinds of drivers for the USB-connection, since W2k gave it the "unsupported" VIA-driver as default, resulting in no response when connecting the devices to it, found that the "VIA Universal host controller" semmed to be the best working...

But NONE if this took me any closer to getting them to work...

I also have an issue with the soundcard. When used with, let's say Winamp it works perfectly well and plays mp3's and .WAV, but when i visit pages on the web that uses audio (FLASH-pages)it starts to make this really annoying flickering kind of noise. It seems that the noise is related to the animations on theese pages, since the noise becomes less intense when there is fewer items moving, and you can tell that the noise is N'SYNC with the animation frame-rate..
The really strange thing is that when you open a new and maximized window on top of the flash-window, the sound is PERFECT!!! Spooky huh??

Please help a desperate swede, and if you decide to, please write to me as if i where a complete idiot, since i now commiunicatate i my second language, and i am not an expert on hardware/W2k.

Begging for an answer, be my hero...

 

[Slikkster]

This may be a USB issue for you as it does refer to your chipset:

Unsupported Via chipset

Write to VIA and refer them to your motherboard, and this knowledge base message from Microsoft.
Ask them what they plan to do about it.

Your English is better than quite a few native English-speaking people. Don't apologize for it...

 

[Ekan]

Hey Slikkster!
Ekan here...
Thank you sooo much, you are right on spot.
I do have the VIA VT82C596 chipset on my MB!
I had W98 a couple of months ago, but the thing is that it didn't seem to work out any better there...but then, i didnt try with all the uppdated drivers i mentioned above...
Witch version is prefered, W98 millenium edition or W98 second edition?
And geeeeeeeez, thanx, a lot man!! This is the first time i ever used a forum like this, and i think you guys rule, just cross your fingers that santa is watching this...

 

[Ekan]

OK, me again..
Apperently gettin' tierd here, i mixed up the numbers.
I have the VIA VT82C596 as mentioned above, but the chipsets described in the url you sent was not one of mine..(but they seem to have the same problem though!)
any other opinions regarding my problems? anyone?
thanx in advance!
Anders Ekström

 

[destroyerOfComputers]

beware of USB 1.0 I have had LOTS of trouble with it on various machines.

 

[AC]

still haven't ruled out hardware failure/defect as a possibility...

since the devices partially work with many different drivers, it could be that something on the motherboard went bad...try the devices on other comps, to rule them out...

u should check the bios settings for the usb and disable pnp os

 

[Slikkster]

My fault for not getting your chipset correct, however, it does appear that this one you have is exhibiting the same issues.

Here's a good website for general USB problems...and this page on the site is specifically for VIA chipset issues. You'll see that VIA has the most problems with USB:

USBman.com VIA troubleshooting page

Additionally, have you tried just running one of the USB devices you have at a time to see if you can replicate the problem? Since USB is hot-swappable, can you leave the Camera unplugged, for example, when you don't need it? Or the writing pad? I know that's not the most efficient solution, but it may be your only option. Look closely at the USBman page, and go to the root page there (http://www.usbman.com) and visit the forums...possibly someone else there has had your issues or has your chipset, etc.

Usbman.com Forum Page

You'll see by looking at the forum there that at least 70 percent of all USB problems people have written in about seem to be VIA-related!

 

[Mark R]

This problem where a connection to a peripheral will just stop working is well known with VIA chipsets.

There are a lot of software 'fixes' but they don't always work.

The best solution is to buy a seperate PCI USB card and disable the USB on the motherboard. If you do decide to buy a seperate USB card make sure that you look at the card and find out what chips it uses - if it uses VIA chips, then don't buy it because these have exactly the same problem. If you can get a 'Belkin' USB card, then these are very good.

 

[mastertech01]

I have a 4 host controller PCI card that works very well. It has lucent chipsets on it and is very well worth the investment if you have a lot of bandwidth hogs.

 

[Ekan]

HEY everybody, looks like it's working now!!!!
Followed some of thew tips at the "USBMAN"-page, and the camera transfers images like never before! I tried transfering 25 pics in one drag n' drop, it was about 7 mb of jpeg's, voila, no problem!!
Don't ask me what did the trick, i unfortunally made too many changes at once to isolate the little devil ...

Something is bothering me though, the issue with the soundcard is not solved yet, and the usb host controller is still sharing IRQ 10 with the LIVE!-soundcard (with the problems described in my first entry), how can i manually separate them and assign USB host controller to, say IRQ 9?? When i ran the computer without the LIVE! (temporary disconnected for trouble shooting), the USB host controller ran at IRQ 9, and it did just fine.
I dont know about the wacom tablet yet, but it has been connected for about half an hour and it is still going strong!!!
THANX TO ALL OF YOU, hope to hear from anyone about the mystery of my LIVE!-card....
Im gonna rate you all TO THE ROOF!!!

 

[sandorski]

You may need to put your Live into another PCI slot. Look in your manual to find which PCI slot that doesnn't share IRQs with other motherboard devices. Also, you may want to disable SB Dos emulation for your Live card.

 

[Slikkster]

Glad the USB is working better...now to the sound card. Changing IRQ's in Windows 2000 is generally not possible. You may be able to do it by manually setting an IRQ for a specific PCI slot, but ONLY if ACPI is NOT enabled by Windows 2000 (and your bios, of course). Here's the explanation from Microsoft:



Windows 2000 IRQ Sharing

I'm not using ACPI here on my Win2K machine and I do have Advanced Power Management enabled...however, ALL my resource settings are locked to "Automatic Settings" in Device Manager and the option is grayed out. I can't change them. I can't say that's true for everyone, but that's my situation.

I'm not convinced it's an IRQ problem. I tend to think you're getting some video distortion creeping into the sound card because of how you describe it. For instance, you say it plays Wav and Mp3's ok, but usually there's very little video changes going on there. Flash, however, is a different story. With Flash, you're getting both moving video AND audio happening concurrently.

You might want to try playing an mp3 file while using one of the video plugins from Winamp to see if that affects the sound, or the Windows Media Player (version 7) with it's built-in video effects. If you get the audio distortion there, too, I would tend to think it's some kind of electrical interference seeping into the audio chain. Or maybe your speakers are real close to your monitor...try moving them further away. Or try unplugging the speakers and try headphones instead. If that simple fix doesn't help, try moving the soundcard to the furthest PCI slot from your AGP video card. If just moving it doesn't help, try manually setting up that slot for a particular IRQ.

 

[Ekan]

Ok guys, gonna hold on to you til' you get bored, becuase this excites me a bit... =)

Status report:
The camers is doing just fine, but to my disappointment the Wacom tablet died in my hands, after being at it for max one hour...I still have the ol' ps/2 within reach, and it runs from the (w2k-) start (together with the tablet) and keeps on doing so after the tablet is gone...It's a bummer!
But the thing is that i can somehow "revive" it by plugging in the camera.
The HD starts buzzing and there it is again, obeying every move i make, but shortly after that it gets tired and wants to sleep again...=(

I can now tell you that the love shared by the USB and soundblaster at the same IRQ has absolutely NOTHING to do with the sound issue. I disabled ALL usb on the MB and it was still there.
Moving the LIVE! around the PCI's does not help, the USB is sooo fond of mr LIVE! that it follows his IRQ wherever he goes, but i dont mind since it does not seem to be the problem..

I can not find any SB Dos emulation nor the ACPI anywhere in my bios...

And i tried all of slik SLIKKSTERS tips, even when playing mp3's i could watch mpeg-movies with perfect sound. That should REALLY point to something, too bad im too stoopid to figure it out...

5:15 in the morning, cant get no sleep, wonder if i will need counsling about this shrinks beware!!!!

 

[Slikkster]

how about downloading Flash from Macromedia again...that would be the easiest thing to try. At least it would rule it out.

Shockwave (Flash player) 5.0 for Windows 98/ME/2000

 

[jugornot]

I had a similar usb problem with via chipsets. Here is what I have and tried. I have epox mvp3g-m 2 ea and mvp3c and one fic 503+. All 4 will use a usb mouse just fine, but only the nvp3c mb (at) can use one of my canon 620u scanner. All of the others have a problem of not recognising or if they recognise freezing when trying to access the scanner. Nothig seemed to help. Thinking it was a chipset problem I bought a opti chip pci 4 port usb adapter. Everything owrked fine. But still I thought it can't be a chipset problem so I started reading around. One of the machines runs win200pro and I had to manually select the via driver for usb with the numbers in it. Then I added a usb hub and suddenly the scanner is fine again. While reading about this hub I bought it because it could either be self powered or bus powered. If self powered it provides max 500 mA to each port but bus powered it only provides 100mA to the ports. Seems to me it may be a power problem however it works whether the hub is powered or not after it is recognised. the driver is the via vt83c572/vt82c586 driver. HTH