Free tools help prevent Universal Serial Bus slowdowns

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LANGALIST By Fred Langa Unintentionally mixing devices from USB’s four different generations can be a performance killer. Trouble is, you can’t always
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SueW, abbodi86, woody, Fred

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… of course there may be times when you want to force a lower speed on some device, for system overall reliability or some such reason.

I still have one device with USB 2.0 uplink and USB 1.1 hub in storage for exactly this purpose.

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Great article, Fred.   I’ve literally ignored a USB error for over a year now.  Downloaded the kit and ran USBView and it identified a wired USB keyboard as the problem.  Had kept my old keyboard connected and on the shelf in case my wireless keyboard stopped working.   Now I know (so unplugged the keyboard; lol).   Oh well.  Just call me lazy.  Still, this is a pretty cool tool.  

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Thanks Fred. I downloaded the USBView tool and now I have questions about what I am seeing. I have a fairly old Toshiba Satellite laptop still running Windows 7. The tool says I have 6 USB Hubs and each hub has either 6 ports or 3 ports. Two hubs are high speed compatible (2.0) and have 6 ports each. Four hubs are standard (1.0) and have 3 ports each.

Now there are only 3 external USB connectors. Why are there 6 hubs but only three connectors? What are the other hubs doing?

I have two devices plugged in externally.

1) is my Western Digital backup hard disk drive which is plugged into the (2.0) hub at Port 1.

2) my Logitech wireless mouse is plugged into one of the low speed hubs (1.0) at Port 2. If I move it to the other external connector it lists it on the same hub but at Port 3.

There is a third device listed as a composite device for Chicony Electronics Co. which is on the second high speed (2.0) hub at Port 1, but I don’t have any other device connected.  I am just guessing that it is the built in laptop camera. Could that be true?

So out of 6 hubs I see only 3 hubs being used for anything, and 19 ports unused.

What are they there for?

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I use usbtreeview which is a knock off of USBView that is a portable program, a plus in my book!

https://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbtreeview_e.html

Just because you don't know where you are going doesn't mean any road will get you there.

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RJT wrote:

Now there are only 3 external USB connectors. Why are there 6 hubs but only three connectors? What are the other hubs doing?

Not much USB is built into the chip set and there may be more capabilities in the chipset than are implemented in hardware (actual sockets)

I believe you are correct about the camera being on a USB port. Looks like you have the HDD on the right port BTW.

Just because you don't know where you are going doesn't mean any road will get you there.

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RJT

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