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About Mike
Expertise
Areas of expertise: PC Hardware, Peripherals, Barcode Scanners, Printers, and Applications, Networking, Microsoft Applications. I am good at researching issues and have a lot of contacts in the IT industry. So, if I can't directly answer a question I can likely find the answer.
Areas I won't be much help in: Apple Computers, Linux, older Networking technologies like Token Ring, or Thick/Thinnet.
Experience
I'm currently a Network Administrator for a contract circuit board manufacturer in Oregon, USA.
I've been working on PCs from a hobby standpoint for better than 25 years. I've been doing it professionally for 4 years.
Education/Credentials
A+ Certification, Network + Certification, MCP, MCDST, MCSA (in process)
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You are here: Experts > Computing/Technology > Focus on PC Support > PC hardware--CPU & Motherboard & RAM > USB high speed controller
Expert: Mike - 10/25/2009
Question
Hi and thanks for your time!
My girlfriend has a Compaq computer running Wiondows XP.
She has a 82801BA/BAM USB Universal Host Controller - 2442 (Intel.) When she plugs in to her usb ports, she usually gets a message saying this device would work better with a high speed usb controller (SanDisk flash drive, etc.)
My question is: is this software or hardware and can a Compaq run it if I were to buy it?
Her computer is slow although it has 1GB of RAM. I've done lots of tweaking to speed it up and have succeeded...kind of, but it is still very compared to mine. Her CPU runs at 100% a good deal of the time.
Anyway, if you have some advice about the usb controller I'd appreciate it.
Thanks again for your time.
Jim
Answer
I'm assuming this is a desktop computer, not a laptop?
You can purchase USB 2.0 cards to add into desktops, which is pretty much your only option because the built-in ones are 'what they are'. USB 2.0 is different hardware technology so there's no way to upgrade lower speed USB ports to 2.0.
If you send me her specific model of PC I can send you some suggestions for cards. However, to be honest, she'll never really notice much difference. My suggestion is to just ignore the annoying little pop-up message.
As for her CPU running at 100%. That's definitely not normal. She would probably benefit from more memory but you should also run some scans for any malicious software, like viruses or spyware, that could be causing that.
A couple programs I highly recommend for catching and killing the nasty little programs that infect computers are:
Microsoft Security Essentials, or MSE. It's a good, free Anti-Virus program. If she's running something else, especially a paid one, like Norton (Norton sucks) I'd remove it and use MSE.
http://www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials/
SuperAntiSpyware. Combined with a decent Anti-Virus this works quite well for catching programs that the other might miss.
http://www.superantispyware.com/superantispyware.html
Some other steps are to make sure her hard drive has a decent amount of empty space. You should also make sure it's regularly defragged.
This isn't necessarily much help but hopefully it helps a bit.
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