On 15 Aug 2005 14:54:09 -0700, "Mr. Land"
<graftonfot@yahoo.com> wrote:

>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:

Why? You *paid* for 2003 Server for this???


>
> 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).


Try updating the motherboard bios if you hadn't already.

>
>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.

Frankly, NEC chipped USB cards are better. If this one
keeps giving you trouble you might consider an NEC card as
they're only ~ $15.

>
>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.)

Anything in Event Viewer or a dump file with some hints at
what's happened?


>
>2. Next I realized that I had actually added a new PCI card without
>reconfiguring the BIOS,

"Realized"? You should not have to reconfigure the bios.
Does the motherboard have a bios that properly supports
WinXP/etc. power management? Do you have any power
management settings, set at short intervals that might
coincide with this issue?



>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.

Is the box running in APM or ACPI PM mode?


>
>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.

First, don't do that "yet". Determine whether the drive
works at all through the original USB ports and/or the two
permanent ports on the PCI card itself. Rule out the common
variables first before moving on to things like front panels
and correct cabling to them.



>
>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.

Forget about the external drive for a moment and just test
each port with another USB device known to work, for example
a mouse or keyboard. If it works on all ports, leave them
alone for the time being.


>
>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.

Try going into add/remove programs and uninstalling ALL USB
drivers. Reboot. Never assume it's better to not reboot,
than to reboot, even if it claims (rightly so) that you
"shouldn't" need to.


>
>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.

Why install it if you're just going to keep uninstalling it?
Undo everything you're manually done, get the system back to
the state it was in before you added the card, then add the
card, and plug in some other generic USB device like a mouse
and try the ports... the original motherboard ports and the
card's rear ports. Plugging ANYTHING into the front ports
should be the very last thing you do, after everything else
has tested ok.


>
>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!

Try running a mature OS instead of Server 2003. Win2k and
XP patches exist for reasons just like this, that eventually
problems get fixed.