weird USB problem in Windows XP

[Booty]

Clean installation of XP SP1, windows updates are all installled, etc. I continually get that new hardware balloon popping up in the lower right hand corner saying 'USB Device Not Recognized'... often 3-4 times in a row, then 30 seconds or so of peace, then a few more, etc. The catch is, I don't have *any* USB devices connected to the computer at all. It's not my system, I did a clean installl of XP from 98 on this for some friends because I guess 98 was acting up on them.

Asus CUBX
Pentium 3 733
256 MB PC133
etc... (don't know what else would be important)

Could a port be damaged or something like that? I have this same motherboard in two systems and am running XP on both without these issues popping up, so I don't think it's a hardware-specific conflict (as in a problem with that model of mobo, etc)... but it *is* a repeatable error. This is the second time through installing XP, same errors both times. Any ideas?

 

[Booty]

Oh, also... no 'unknown devices' show up in device manager either...

 

[boomerang]

Sorry, no hard and fast answer for you, but you might want to see if all of these boards are running the same BIOS version. If the problem board is the odd man out, flash it to match the others.

Maybe 98 was acting up on them in a similar manner?

 

[Booty]

Originally posted by: boomerang
Sorry, no hard and fast answer for you, but you might want to see if all of these boards are running the same BIOS version. If the problem board is the odd man out, flash it to match the others.

Maybe 98 was acting up on them in a similar manner?

Yep, that's what I was thinking... except that 98 doesn't have the hardware balloon come up all the time, so the problem was probably more in the background I suppose. I have flashed the BIOS to the most recent one available (same as the other boards), and I have also looked to disable the USB ports for now, but that is not an option with this board.

The main complaint with 98 was that it would start lagging horribly... jerky (or slow or ever no) mouse movements, etc., even after a clean boot. Weird problems for sure, and I'm not certain they all are related to the USB thing, but I figured since it was the most evident I'd start there.

I'm tempted to just replace the motherboard, but it's not easy finding an intel-based socket 370 motherboard these days... all I can find are VIA chipsets.