USB Device error message

[janlafata]

I have an MSI K8MM3-V x64 AMD motherboard with a 3200 MHz processor, 2 GB's of RAM, a 256 MB NVidia GeForce 7600 graphics card, A Creative Labs Audigy SE sound card and a Coolmax 550 watt power supply.

The board I am using is refurbished. I had to send one back because of some bad PCI slots, before that, the first MSI motherboard, which was new, didn't even boot up. Now they've sent me this replacement and twice now I've gotten an error message after the desktop comes up concerning a USB device that is not recognized.

I did not get this message on my previous MSI board, and the MSI techs, God Bless em', said they don't think I should worry about it. Brillant eh?

By the way, I am running Vista x64 and all of the three USB devices that I am running, a printer, a scanner and a webcam, all work fine. And everything looks good in device manager.

When I was running XP x64, an unknown device was always showing in device manager and I never could figure out what that was or what to do about it.

On this error message, which I have attached, it says "One of the USB devices attached to this computer malfunctioned and Windows does not recognize it". It then shows in the main window that it's a USB Root Hub (2 ports) and includes an unused port and an unknown device.

Then at the bottom it says "Recommendation: Try reconnecting the device. If Windows still does not recognize it, try replacing the device.

I'm wondering if a BIOS update might solve this. Otherwise I'm stumped. But my system runs fine, and if anything I'd just like to stop seeing the error message. Anyone now how to to that on Vista?

[dahlarbear]

1.  Error Message.

On this error message, which I have attached, it says "One of the USB devices attached to this computer malfunctioned and Windows does not recognize it". It then shows in the main window that it's a USB Root Hub (2 ports) and includes an unused port and an unknown device.

Then at the bottom it says "Recommendation: Try reconnecting the device. If
Windows still does not recognize it, try replacing the device.

I don't know that it will make a difference, but I see no attachment (unless you're referring to the in-line messages quoted in your text).

2.  USBView.  Following quote from FTDI Utilities web page:

USBView is a free utility from Microsoft that displays the USB connection tree and shows the USB devices that are connected to it together with their configuration data.  This is very useful for debugging USB enumeration errors.  USBView runs under Windows 98, ME, 2000 and XP.

They lie.  Their version doesn't run on my Windows 98 system (I can find older version that does if needed.  Let me know).  I'm pretty sure their version will run on Windows 2000, XP, and Vista.

Originally developed by Microsoft, this tool appears to be the defacto goto tool for examining a computer's USB connections.  A search of the internet for tools consistently leads to either this tool or commerical USB protocol analyzer software.

Download the USBView zip file from their web page.  Unzip the executable.  The executable is the program.  Double click to run it.  GUI window opens with two panes.  Within the left pane, find the USB device you want information on.  Left click on that device.  Its information appears in the right pane.

If you find anything interesting, cut the information from the right pane and "post" it here.

If you want to delve into USB some more, see the links on the following post:  USB Ports.