Try moving the USB card to a different card slot. Some motherboards
have conflicts with some of the control lines (such as bus mastering) which
can pre3vent cards from working in certain combinations.

--
- Gary Chanson (Windows SDK MVP)
- Abolish Public Schools


"Mr. Land" <graftonfot@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1124142849.574932.190460@o13g2000cwo.googlegr oups.com...
> Hello,
>
> I'm having trouble configuring an ALi PCI USB Host Controller and was
> wondering if anyone had any suggestions.
>
> I should start off by stating that I've already searched Google Groups,
> and the Internet in general for help. I've found a few resources and
> tried them, but no luck so far.
>
> I'm running Windows 2003 Server SP1 on a homebuilt system:
>
> Processor: Celeron 1.4 GHz
> Mainboard: ABit BE6-II v2.0
> System BIOS: Award 6.00 PG
> Memory: 768MB SDRAM
> Video Card: Matrox Millenium G450
>
> (I can supply more detail if necessary).
>
> This motherboard supplies the two "standard" USB ports in the rear, but
> I wanted both to add more USB ports and have them accessible in the
> front, so I bought an ALi PCI to USB Host Controller to add to the
> system. This is a PCI add-in card that provides two additional USB
> ports in the rear, and comes with a 4-port front panel assembly that
> fits in a drive bay and connects to the card via a ribbon cable.
>
> Here's my story so far:
>
> 1. At first I simply (and naively) installed the card and rebooted,
> figuring that Windows 2003 would install its own drivers for the new
> card. The system booted up and detected the new card, and proceeded to
> configure it. After that, it would boot OK, but it would randomly (but
> reliably) lock up completely after a few minutes (meaning "frozen"
> graphic display, no response to mouse, keyboard, etc.)
>
> 2. Next I realized that I had actually added a new PCI card without
> reconfiguring the BIOS, so I rebooted and entered the BIOS setup
> screen, then enabled the "Update ESCD Data" option. I saw some
> seemingly different PCI IRQ assignments flash by on the screen during
> the next bootup, which made me hopeful. After some testing, this
> seemed to get rid of the random lockup problem.
>
> 3. Since the system now seemed to be OK, I next tried to plug an
> external USB hard drive into one of the 4 front-panel USB ports
> provided by the new card. The instant I did this, the system locked up
> hard again. I tested this a few times to make sure it happened
> consistently.
>
> 4. I started Device Manager to look for possible conflicts. I didn't
> see any, but I did notice something puzzling: after auto-detecting the
> card, Windows adds what seems to be too many devices for it: under
> "Universal Serial Bus controllers", there appear 3 separate devices
> named "ULi PCI to USB Open Host Controller" and 1 more called "ULi USB
> 2.0 Enhanced Host Controller" (all these in addition to the already
> existing Intel USB controller.) Of the first 3, 2 are configured to
> use IRQ 10, with the third using IRQ 11. The fourth new device uses
> IRQ 11 also. In addition to these devices, 4 new "USB Root Hub" items
> appear. Three of these seem to provide 2 ports (?), while the 4th
> provides 6 (which is what I'd expect: 2 at the rear of the card and 4
> on the front panel.) Having this many new devices didn't seem right,
> so I manually uninstalled each one, then selected "Scan for hardware
> changes" and, as I watched, all of them were reinstalled again.
>
> 5. Next I examined the driver CD that came with the card. It did not
> list Windows 2003 as an option, but since it did include Windows 2000,
> and since I didn't seem to be otherwise getting anywhere, I decided to
> run the included driver install utility (an .EXE). It finished,
> explicitly stating that a reboot would not be required.
>
> 6. I started Device Manager again. This time, I saw two USB
> categories: the original: "Universal Serial Bus controllers", and a new
> one: "Universal Serial Bus Controllers" (note that the "c" is
> capitalized in the new category.) Under the new category, there are
> two items "ALi PCI to USB Enhanced Host Controller" (using IRQ 05), and
> "USB 2.0 Root Hub". Going back to the first category, I uninstalled
> all the additional devices there which I described in Step 4 above.
>
> 7. Finally, I tried connecting some USB devices (a card reader,
> external hard drive). Nothing works at all. The devices never show
> up, almost as if the front panel jacks weren't internally connected to
> anything.
>
> Any suggestions would be much appreciated!
>