PCTech Forums

Hello everyone,

I have recently upgraded my PC with a new video card. And since then my USB WiFi adapter had been acting strangely. It had been showing that my Wifi network signal strength is low and the internet had been working very slow. And at some websites with big traffic or flash content (like youtube or facebook) I was getting BSoD.

Then I plugged my wifi adapter to another USB port which is parallel to a port where my external hard drive is connected. Now it works better, internet connection is fast, no bluescreen either. Though, rarely the wifi part of the explorer.exe crashes and I have to restart my PC to get it to work again.
But! As soon as I unplug my external hard drive, my wifi adapter power drops again! Or i get sounds like the adapter is being plugged and unplugged continuously.
Now I was thinking it is power shortage, but then why would wifi adapter work when hard drive is there. And they both work well together!

Please help if you can

My PC is CASPER SLP 1.0-2.0 (MSI motherboard)
Intel Pentium 4 CPU 3.60 GHz
RAM: 1.5 GB DDR2 667Mhz (512MB + 1GB)
Screen Card: Nvidia GeForce 8400GS (512MB DRR2)
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit

Thats an odd one, have you check the device manager for conflicts with it plugged in?

Device manager shows no conflicts.
The USB Hub I am using has 5 ports. I have disabled the ability to shut it down to save power, but it does not help.
Both hard drive and wifi adapter require 500 mA to work as far as I have seen it. And they work fine together. But wifi adapter alone doesnt work properly on any of my USB hubs.
My wifi adapter is USRobotics.

hubs as in external ones? If so is it the same with onboard ports?

Hi Richard

You might have too many USB devices messing up Windows

Rt click on Computer and left click on properties. Select "advanced system settings"

Bottom right, select "environment variables"

On system variables, select new

Variable name, type in: Devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices

under value type in 1

Hit ok and save. Close out and go into device manager again and click on view and select show hidden devices.

If you see yellow question marks, go in and delete the items, then under USB get rid of items that are grayed out. You can do the same thing for display adapters. Keep away from non-plug and play, network and sound items.

One other thing to consider is that your motherboard will only deliver a total of 2 mA to the USB. You may need and I recommend that you have a USB power assisted hub. Plus I am sure you will discover, if you follow the above. Every time you install the same device in another usb port, the system reserves resources for that item. So if you have 10 usb devices and 4 usb ports, you could have resources allocated for 40 devices if you plugged them into any port available

Thank you very much. I will let you know if this helps once I try it out.

Ok now I have deleted unused USB hubs and some other stuff in device manager. Now when I disconnect my external hard drive, my USB adapter works well for a while then disconnects and connects again within few seconds and works well, and then the whole thing repeats again.