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02 Mar 05 - 07:25 PM (#1425411) Subject: Tech: USB conflict? From: Shanghaiceltic My printer, an HP 5510, has been causing me some problems. Everytime I plug it in to the USB port the software starts to install itself again. The printer works fine but it is a pain to wait everytime for the software to boot up. I have unistalled and renistalled the software but it still does the same thing. Any ideas or tips how to sort out USB conflicts? |
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02 Mar 05 - 08:03 PM (#1425436) Subject: RE: Tech: USB conflict? From: JohnInKansas The conflict may arise when you unplug the printer, assuming that you ever do. With recent Windows versions you should have an icon in the System Tray, at the bottom right side of the window, that looks like a little "block" with a fat arrow above it. This is the "safely remove" utility. A "proper" name would be it's the "device dismount" button. If you don't go there, double click the icon to get the menu of devices, and click on the device you want to remove, before you pull the plug, your system thinks that device is still connected, at least until you reboot. If you plug the device back in, the computer thinks "the old one is already there, so this must be a new one, I guess I should install it." With some ancient versions of Windows, you had to go to control panel to "unattach" a device, so most people just shut the computer down before unplugging anything. That way the computer's PnP routine looked, at reboot, to see what was actually connected, and didn't get tricked into thinking you had more junk hooked up than was really there. The "dismount button" probably appeared fairly recently in response to complaints from the "road warriors" who do a lot of hooking and unhooking to their laptops, but it's helpful for desktop units as well. There could be other problems with your driver installations for the printer, but my guess is that you're just confusing the OS with improper disconnects. If you don't have the "safe remove" button, you can try turning the computer off to remove and/or connect the printer, and see if it recognizes it correctly at reboot without reinstalling new drivers. If that works, you may be able to install a current "Windows default driver" to create the button, which should remain if you uninstall that driver and put your "real HP" one back on. Success here is "variable." John |
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02 Mar 05 - 08:06 PM (#1425437) Subject: RE: Tech: USB conflict? From: The Fooles Troupe Occasionally my UPS went mad - the PC loses contact etc. A reboot fixes it - I shifted the USB plug to another slot and it seems happier. |
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02 Mar 05 - 08:13 PM (#1425441) Subject: RE: Tech: USB conflict? From: JohnInKansas Although it's not related to the current problem, some USB devices do have a problem with "green machine" sleep modes. If there's an input during the entry into "sleep," the machine often fails to recognize the USB device when it "wakes up." It happens most often if you move a USB mouse while the "go to sleep" process is in mid snore. I think there's a patch for that one, but I haven't needed it so I probably don't have any notes about it. John |
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02 Mar 05 - 09:20 PM (#1425486) Subject: RE: Tech: USB conflict? From: Sorcha Just leave it plugged in. If necessary, get a multi USB port thingie. |
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02 Mar 05 - 09:51 PM (#1425503) Subject: RE: Tech: USB conflict? From: JohnInKansas If the problem is a shortage of ports, and you have to unplug the printer to plug something else in, then it's doubly important that you follow a proper disconnect procedure. The same procedure applies to things like cameras, etc. Improper disconnect and plugin has been suggested as one of the causes for "loss of format" in camera memory chips, which can cause loss of pictures and/or other hassles. If you just don't have enough ports to leave things plugged in, as Sorcha suggests a 4-port USB hub, a little larger than an audio tape cassette, shouldn't cost you more than about $20. Plug-and-Play with any Windows system should take care of all the setup for one. John |
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03 Mar 05 - 02:49 AM (#1425659) Subject: RE: Tech: USB conflict? From: pavane USB has been a real pain. There seems no rhyme or reason. USB memory sticks may or may not be recognised - this is on both WIN98SE and WIN XP. On some systems, they seem to keep their drive assignments, and not on others. E.g. one unit I have is ALWAYS the G drive on one (WinXP) machine, regardless of there being no F drive, even though a different unit becomes F:. One will work on one machine, but is not recognised on another. After installing a USB keyboard on my old WIN98 laptop, it refused to recognise my original memory stick at all, but will find the new one (Different make). On my WIN98 desktop, it will only recognise one particular one when in a specific USB socket. And so it goes on. |
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03 Mar 05 - 03:56 AM (#1425683) Subject: RE: Tech: USB conflict? From: JohnInKansas pavane - By way of minor consolation, I can suggest that it's still less hassle than SCSI, which is probably the nearest second cousin to USB. They don't pronounce it Scuzzy entirely because that's what the acronym looks like. Many USB devices work fine off a generic hookup. Quite a few cameras seem to need "device specific drivers" to be able to read their memory cards reliably. Once you install the camera software, the machine has the right driver, and memory cards from that camera usually will work okay in another USB reader. A different brand of memory card should work okay; but if a particular card is giving you trouble, most cameras do allow you to format a card. It's possible that reformatting in the camera the card that causes a problem might help, although I can't offer any citations on that. One CRITICAL step with any USB device that needs a "special" driver is that the DRIVER MUST BE INSTALLED BEFORE THE DEVICE IS PLUGGED IN FOR THE FIRST TIME. If you plug in before the right driver is in place, Windows PnP will hook a generic driver to it, and you'll have to uninstall the port(s) and start over to get it right. As mentioned, many older machines have more than one jack/connector attached to a single port. This is theoretically permissible, but often doesn't work as advertised. A USB HUB connected to the machine, with all the USB devices connected to the hub, often works better if the machine has "shared ports." Another "permissible" setup that often doesn't work well is mixing old USB and USB-2 devices on the same connection. USB-2 devices usually are capable of dropping back to USB-1 speed, if there are USB-1 devices on the system, but often they don't work as cleanly when forced to do so. Unless you've updated it, the Win98 machine probably doesn't have a USB2 port, which might explain some of the differences between the two machines. I've had little trouble with USB connections. One inkjet printer, one flatbed scanner, and two external hard drives as fixed connections through a 4-port switching hub, and the camera and/or a couple of card readers intermittently direct to my WinXP machine. The workhorse Laser printer is on the ethernet LAN, which also connects to "her" Win2K machine with a multipurpose printer/scanner and an external hard drive both on USB with no separate hub. Possible the thing that keeps the system clean is that all of the USB devices are the same USB-2 variety(?). John |
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03 Mar 05 - 06:08 AM (#1425750) Subject: RE: Tech: USB conflict? From: pavane On my OLD laptop, which only has WIN98SE and only one USB1 port, installing a specific device driver for one item seems to have uninstalled a different item, and I can't get it back. The memory sticks are just memory, not camera cards (SANDISK units), and are USB2. They work fine for what I want, backup and data transfer, provided the system finds them! Also, when I tried using a minihub, my USB DVD drive hijacked it, and nothing else would work when it was plugged in. This sort of defeated the object a bit, because I wanted to use a USB network adaptor at the same time, to get data off the DVD onto the network. |
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03 Mar 05 - 06:40 AM (#1425763) Subject: RE: Tech: USB conflict? From: The Fooles Troupe So is there a USB tester/scanner SW thingie around that tell us what is installed? And I notice that most 'WebCams' currently on offer here may be USB 1 - if they are USB 2 they seem to say so. I have been told that USB memory cards greater than 256Mb are a nightmare at one University - they will not be read by some machines if formatted on others etc. |
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03 Mar 05 - 01:21 PM (#1426075) Subject: RE: Tech: USB conflict? From: JohnInKansas pavane - If you only have one USB port, it's very important that you "unmount" a device before you pull the plug to remove it. You may already have been doing this, but it's a common cause of problems. You should have a "safe remove" button in the tool tray at the bottom of the Windows screen. If you don't, you may have to look elsewhere for instructions. Some older systems, and older devices, were simply not designed for "hot removal" and you had to shut down the machine, preferably BEFORE removing a device. You also had to reboot when you plugged in a new USB device to get PnP to run, recognize the new device, and install an appropriate driver. If a device you attach needs a special driver, you may need to "archive" the driver install file(s) somewhere on the machine so that PnP will be able to find and reinstall the right one during reboot; --- and you may need to figure out a way to prevent installation of a "generic" driver from the backup .CAB library. If you have one of these older machines, you're unlikely to find much in your driving manual, since in the time frame when stuff like this was sold there was no hot-removable stuff around, so of course they didn't include instructions. In a desktop, you can usually install a USB Port Card if there's an available slot, ignore the old connectors, and get all the newer goodies; but in a laptop there may be no usable way to update the existing port(s). The DVD hijack of the USB suggests that your port was an old one that doesn't support more than one device at a time. The system has to support knowing a separate name for each device on the USB loop. There may be a way to reconfigure the installation to get it to recognize the hub, and use multiple device names to get through it to multiple devices; but that information has slipped out of the bottom of my data storage bin if it was ever there. If you have an "XP Machine" – built since XP was around, and with the OS installed when you got it – you shouldn't have to worry about this. If you've upgraded to WinXP on an older machine, it's hard to guess where all the clinkers may be. If you're using a reader with your memory sticks, it's the reader that has to be recognized. The driver that the reader needs may depend on the format of the stick that's in it, and there are variations in the formatting of memory cards/sticks. You should be able to swap sticks to another of the same format, but changing to another format may require dismounting the reader and remounting it with a different driver. Newer readers do this automatically, but an older one may not. Memory sticks/cards are just like disks or drives. They can be reformatted; but I'd suggest understanding your situation a little better before going that route. It's probably not reversible. If you're talking about the little cards that stuff in a card slot in your laptop, then changing to a different card may require dismount/remount as for any other change to a new USB device, and depending on your machine, it may mean shut down – remove – insert – reboot. It's good that the sticks are USB2, but they'll run as USB1 if that's what your port (and/or hub) is. Most hubs you're likely to have found should be USB-2. They should fall back to USB-1 if there's a USB-1 device in the loop, but some really old ones, and a few super-cheap ones, have to be told via setup changes to run as USB-1 if there's any USB-1 device on the loop. John |
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03 Mar 05 - 06:43 PM (#1426357) Subject: RE: Tech: USB conflict? From: GUEST,Jon Well it does not sound like a conflict to me. Are you sure you are plugging into the same port each time? I don't understand the set up but do know that if I plug the same device in a different port, it becomes a "new device" and Windows is stupid enough even to ask for drivers that it already has installed. |
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04 Mar 05 - 12:07 AM (#1426507) Subject: RE: Tech: USB conflict? From: Shanghaiceltic The weird thing is if I plug anything into my USB port, memory stick, camera, anything it starts the HP printer software re-loading. Even if the pc is swiched off and on again without the printer connected. I have tried to go back in my mind over when this happened and I cannot recall adding more software other than the camera. But why should plugging anyhting into the USB cause it to start a software re-load. I do have a USB hub. Until I netowrk the printer or put it on bluetooth I have to move my PC to the printer as we only have one in the office. This is a new office. |
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04 Mar 05 - 02:35 PM (#1426764) Subject: RE: Tech: USB conflict? From: JohnInKansas Computers generally expect printers to stay connected. In many cases, when you install a printer you assign a port to it. The usual "assignment" is LPT1. With Windows, the "LPT1" port doesn't have to be a physical serial connection like in the olden days. "LPT1" can be - in a really bizarre case - a USB jack. If you've assigned the printer to the USB port, and if the printer installation gave that port the "be LPT1" assignment, when your computer boots it's going to try to connect to that printer on that port. If the printer doesn't "answer" to say it's there, it's fairly likely that the PnP is going to try to "fix" the connection by installing (re-installing) the printer driver. Even if it doesn't reinstall at boot, when you plug anything into that "LPT1 alias USB" jack, the computer may think someone just flipped the switch to turn the printer on. (Note that this is pretty much a SWAG.) I will note that I have three HP printers. They all work just fine, but each of them sets up a different set of "unusual" connections. The last "normal" HP printer I had died several years ago of old age. HP seems to have a different mindset about how printers work than is common in the business. I haven't had to contact them recently, but their email support worked pretty well some months ago. It's possible they might have had prior reports on your problem. If it's really necessary to disconnect the printer frequently, you might want to ask about "how do I use this printer with my laptop at the motel" to get them thinking in the right direction. They may have a driver that will work and will support properly dismounting the printer when you want to unplug it. John |