USB 2.0 Problem

September 19, 2005 10:20 AM

Too many USB devices?

Whenever I burn a CD with my DVD burner at 48x, I get a really weird problem with the buffer jumping between 20% and 90% percent in Nero. I've determined that this is due to too many USB devices on the same chain (I'm using a USB mouse, keyboard, wireless ethernet, DVD Burner, Palm Pilot and one other random dongle), and when I unplug all but the DVD burner everything works ok.

Is there any way to disable USB devices easily in software, without having to un-plug the chain every time I burn a CD? Are those devices really taking up too much bandwidth for a CD to burn (USB 2.0)?

posted by SweetJesus to computers & internet (9 comments total)

Of course, this is Windows XP.
posted by SweetJesus at 10:21 AM on September 19, 2005

Have you narrowed it down to a specific device? I bet it's the wireless adapter.

You can't chain USB devices anyway. I assume you have all those devices plugged into a hub. You could get a second hub for everything but the DVD burner and plug that into the first. It might not help but at least it'd make unplugging everything but the DVD burner easier.
posted by kindall at 10:26 AM on September 19, 2005

Is it actually effecting the burning of the CD? The Nero buffer always jumps from around 5-99% with me. I don't know why, but I have never bothered finding out because the results are always okay.
posted by fire&wings at 10:28 AM on September 19, 2005

I have had over a dozen cd and/or dvd burner with different Nero versions and different computers...

Always buffers to 99%...

If your burn quality is o.k..., then don't worry about it..

I think it buffers that way all the time.

I have never seen buffer being not 99% in any configurations
posted by curiousleo at 10:46 AM on September 19, 2005

The buffer isn't supposed to jump between 20% and 90%, it should build up slowly and stay at around 99%. In my case it goes to 95%, back to 20%, and builds up to 90% again before jumping back down and yo-yo'ing. This has the effect of making a 2 minute CD burn take 12 minutes. Forget about burning a DVD, it takes about 10 times longer than it should.

You can't chain USB devices anyway.

By chain, I mean they're all together in one hub, except the DVD burner and the wireless adaptor, which are plugged into their own slots. But that shouldn't matter anyway, because they all work off the same shared pool of resources, right?

You could get a second hub for everything but the DVD burner and plug that into the first. It might not help but at least it'd make unplugging everything but the DVD burner easier.

I'd rather be able to find some simple software that would let me "checklist" off USB devices, rather than reaching around the back of my computer and grabbing at things every time I want to make a CD.
posted by SweetJesus at 11:23 AM on September 19, 2005

A second hub probably won't help. USB is a polled bus, so another hub won't cut down on the traffic. It would only help if you were right on the edge of power utilization (but I'm assuming the DVD burner is self powered) or if there was a bad cable or something.

The list of devices you have plugged in itself doesn't sound like much of a problem, but if anything could cause a problem, I'd guess it's the wireless ethernet.

I suggest unplugging that first and see how it affects your burning.
posted by johannes at 11:33 AM on September 19, 2005

It's probably the ethernet dongle, but it's a real pain to pull it out and put it back in everytime. Is there any software out there that allows you to enable/disable all your USB devices?
posted by SweetJesus at 11:49 AM on September 19, 2005

FWIW if your computer has 6 (or 8 or whatever) USB slots it's possible there are only 3 (or 4 or whatever) USB busses available - there's typically a hub built in to the USB controller chips that provides two ports. usually when I hook USB devices up to a system I start at the top (for ports on the back) and then use every other port; that way each device/hub/etc gets its own bus. you may try rearranging where everything's plugged into on your machine, since it's possible that your DVD burner and your wifi dongle or USB hub are competing for resources on the same bus.

as for just disabling devices you can always just go in and disable the wifi dongle in Network Adapters, or other devices in Computer Management. it might work, dunno if those devices will still command system resources if they're disabled but hooked in on USB. you can remove the device using the system tray icon but you'll have to physically unplug and replug everything in when you want to use it again.
posted by mrg at 1:45 PM on September 19, 2005

If you have at least one open slot you could get another USB card and plug that in, and put the burner on that. Putting it on another bus should eliminate the problem.
posted by kindall at 1:55 PM on September 19, 2005