USB2.0 PCMCIA card Win2K install problems

[lamoid]

Dear Folks,

I've got yet another USB 2.0 PCMCIA card installation issue. I've spent hours scouring the net, including these forums, for a solution to no avail. Whence,

I have an Inspiron I8000 running Windows 2000 Professional. Recently I purchased a generic 4-port USB 2.0 PCMCIA CardBus card. It contains the NEC NBUPCM4 chip. The problem I am about to describe occurs with all of the various device drivers for this chip that I have been able to find. The system recognizes the card but mis-assigns its low-level drivers to the USB 1.0 device that is built-in to the I8000. As a result, anything that I connect to the PCMCIA card is not seen by the OS.

I start with a clean system state, no USB 2.0 drivers beyond the ones included in Service Pack 4 and no registry entries for the device. The device manager, whether set up to reveal all hidden entries or not, displays only the USB1 port that came with the computer. It is listed as a single 'Universal Serial Bus controllers' item which contains as sub-items

'Intel(R) 82801BA/BAM USB Universal Host Controller - 2442' and
'USB Root Hub'

The first is a device driver that, according to the device manager controls a hardware device that resides at 'PCI bus 0, device 31, function 2'. It lists uhcd.sys as the driver file.

The second is the driver for the connection to which my mouse is now attached, the first socket, 'Location zero' of the 'Standard USB Host Controller' as listed in the device manager. It lists usbhub.sys as its driver file.

Now, when I introduce the PCMCIA USB2.0 card, The device manager shows a new 'Universal Serial Bus controllers' item at the same level as the original one. The new item contains sub-items

'USB 2.0 Enhanced Host Controller' and
'USB 2.0 Root Device'

as would be expected.

The first item is the controller of the card which exists at location, 'PCI bus 87, device 0, function 2', with driver files, 'ousb2hub.sys' and 'ousbehci.sys'.

The second, according to the device manager has a location on 'USB 2.0 Enhanced Host Controller', with associated file, 'ousb2hub.sys'. It never shows that anything is connected to it, even when there is, such as my mouse or a scanner or an external disk drive.

The problem is that upon installing the PCMCIA USB2.0 card, four new items appear under the FIRST 'Universal Serial Bus controllers' item, rather than the second as they should. These are two sub-items with the name

'Standard OpenHCD PCI to USB Host Controller'

The first resides at 'PCI bus 87, device 0, function 0' and the second at 'PCI bus 87, device 0, function 1'. This means that they are part of the PCMCIA card. But, they are incorrectly associated with the built-in USB 1.0 port. Indeed, the driver files associated with them are openhci.sys, usbd.sys, usbhub.sys, and usbui,dll, which are the MS USB1 drivers!

The second two of the four new items that appear under the first 'Universal Serial Bus controllers' item are named

'USB Root Hub'

Each is said to exist at 'Location zero' of the 'Standard USB Host Controller' and have usbhub.sys as its driver file, as does the original under there that holds my mouse.

All this can be traced in the registry as well. The new devices are listed at hardware address that indicate they belong to the PCMCIA card. But, they are associated by the OS with the original USB1 controller and assigned the USB1 device drivers.

I've tried everything that I can think of: three or four different versions of drivers for PCMCIA cards that use the NEC chip. I've loaded them in various sequences, tried re-assigning drivers, applied the patch that's suggested on some pages, done it with hardware in and hardware out, and devices connected or not. Nothing has worked.

I've tried directly rewriting all the associated registry keys, that might have worked, but the system would not let me apply those patches.

No matter what I do, plug-and-play, I presume, insists that the PCMCIA card's USB ports absolutely MUST be associated with the internal USB device.

What can I do other than doing away with the APCI IRQ sharing and reinstalling the OS with the standard HAL? The machine needs to have ACPI or something like it to handle all the devices it has. Is there anyway to alter the way plug-and-play performs these assignments? Any jumpers I can change on the motherboard? The BIOS for I8000 (Phoenix ROM BIOS PLUS Version 1.10 A23) permits neither resetting of IRQs nor disabling the built-in USB hardware.

I believe that I can edit the registry file to force the the correct drivers to appear in the correct places with the correct hardware associations. However, regedit does not permit me to load the new keys because the system has a lock on the old (incorrect ones). Do you know how to force a register change or to do it off-line some how or, perhaps with the recovery console?

Any suggestions appreciated.

--Lamoid F. Llurbybabbin

[NooNoo]

Welcome to Windrivers lamoid.

Have you updated the bios have you done the bios update available for your pc?
or
how about the motherboard drivers?

Both may affect the behaviour of peripheral devices.

Have you tested the card in another laptop to see if it's not faulty?