Mystery USB hub problem

seberle · 04-18-2009, 03:18 PM

My Dell XPS 400 cannot handle a powered USB hub and I cannot figure out why.

It has taken me over a year to figure this out. I have gone through three different brands of USB hubs, 2 motherboards and several GB of memory. In all cases, the computer works fine without a USB hub. With the USB hub either the computer crashes when I plug a device in or the computer refuses to boot at all. When the computer refuses to boot, the error lights report either a memory problem or an expansion card problem, neither of which is the true problem as testing has shown. In every case, simply unplugging the USB hub solves the problem.

I do not really need a hub. I installed it merely for convenience. I kept buying more hubs because I thought I had bought a faulty hub. But ALL 3 have created problems. Since I don't need a hub, I am satisfied with the computer as it is. But I am extremely curious. WHAT on earth is causing this problem? It is not the motherboard because I have the identical problem with both motherboards. (I originally bought the second motherboard because I thought that was the problem.) It is not memory, which has been swapped out. Where else could the problem be? It is not the OS (Windows XP SP3) or any software because the computer fails before booting the OS.

Any ideas?

Wrench97 · 04-18-2009, 04:20 PM

Will it do it on the front and rear USB ports or only one or the other?

seberle · 04-18-2009, 04:26 PM

Wrench97:
I never tried it on the front ports and I'm not anxious to do further testing, though I will if it will likely show something interesting. I had assumed the ports were the same. What would it show if the problem did or did not occur on the front ports?

Wrench97 · 04-18-2009, 04:41 PM

If it was happening on the front and not the rear I was thinking maybe a bad front panel, The other way around ..........will take some thought...