USB (Universal Serial Bus) repair

Diy-Computer-Repair can help!

Trouble shooting USB devices:

You will find more information on USB repair in the Self Computer Repair Unleashed! Manual.

Back in the day (my son's favorite saying if it is over two years ago) computers came with a parallel and a serial port for connecting external devices (besides keyboard and video). Parallel was for the printer and a couple of specialized devices. Serial was for things like modems, EPROM burners, or sometimes a mouse.

Newer computers have USB ports that replace both the Parallel and the Serial ports. The best of both worlds have all three. My laptop is brand new, no parallel, no serial, no mouse, or keyboard ports but it has three usb ports, and surprise one is on the front of the computer, amazing.

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This is kind of ok, most devices are going usb anyway, but if you still have the old devices you will have to install a card with the appropriate port to utilize it.

So what does this mean to you? One thing is how many ports do you have? How many devices do you want to connect? Older devices were the 1.1 standard the newer are 2.0. Do you want to be able to boot your system from your usb floppy or cd-rom, how about your flash drive?

Lets look at the standards first.

1.1 is the original ISO (International Standard Organization) for USB. The standard specifies how the usb protocol will be implemented and what is expected from devices utilizing the standard. The main factors here are the type of connector used on the computer and the device and the connection speed.

(Note: the original specification did not have a provision to power the device down while the computer was powered up, to disconnect with out damaging the device or the computer you had to power every thing down.)

2.0 is an upgrade of the ISO standard, that specifies a faster speed for the device, adding a provision that the computer could turn the device off (power it down) before disconnecting, this also allowed for the user to connect the device while the computer was powered up. Very handy.

Connecting and Disconnecting USB Devices

Most of the 2.0 standard software is built into the drivers that are installed by the OS when it is installed, although some devices have their own drivers when you purchase the product. So the only time you have to worry about 1.1 version USB is when you connect the device and then want to disconnect it while the computer is powered up. Windows XP has an icon in the system try that looks like a arrow pointing down over a green card, this is the "Safely Remove Hardware" program. If you open it up any device that the OS can power down is listed here. There are a couple of devices that will be listed here that are not usb devices, laptops will list a CD/DVD that is considered docked, some laptop PCMI cards will be listed. If you select a device and click on the "stop" button you will get a message that the device is safe to remove, but if it is a 1.1 standard it may not be powered down! Other times you will get a message that the device can not be safely removed, there may be a file open on the device or the software is telling you it can not power down the device. Either way do not disconnect the device you could damage the device and or the computer. In this case you will have to power everything down to disconnect it.

If your ports have failed and they are embedded on the motherboard you have two choices:

• Replace the motherboard
• Install an USB add on card (cheapest).

Trouble shooting devices:

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