USB 1.1 to 2.0 upgrade - how?

January 2, 2008 7:04 PM

My admittedly ancient Dell laptop has 2 USB ports, which are both version 1.1. Everything I plug in these days triggers a Windows box that says 'Hey! this will go much faster if you have a USB 2.0 connection'. Gee, thanks, Windows. How do I accomplish this? Is this a software or a hardware upgrade? Is it even possible on a 2002 laptop?
posted by eaglehound to computers & internet (7 comments total)

Sure, you could snag a PCMCIA USB 2.0 cardbus (check around at your favorite retailer instead of course)
posted by samsara at 7:06 PM on January 2, 2008

Here's an alternate froogle link too
posted by samsara at 7:11 PM on January 2, 2008

You can at least disable the warning: System --> Hardware --> Device Manager --> Universal Serial Bus controllers --> right-click on any of the Controller devices listed, get Properties --> Advanced and check the box marked "Don't tell me about USB errors".

One caveat: This will shut off the godawful annoying "Hey, this is a slow USB port!" (which really should not show up as an "error" on a system with no faster ones), but it will also stop your computer from telling you if a device fails to mount or is not recognized, etc., so be aware of this if you turn the option off.
posted by caution live frogs at 7:19 PM on January 2, 2008 [1 favorite]

You may want to check Dell's support site for updated drivers - a friend of mine reinstalled windows on his machine and the generic Windows drivers only saw his ports as USB 1.1, but once he got the latest chipset drivers they went back to full speed. Sounds like a long shot, but 2002 also seems pretty recent for a laptop to be sporting 1.1 ports.
posted by whir at 7:38 PM on January 2, 2008

Actually, it's not. A laptop I bought in February of 2006 only had USB 1.1 ports.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 8:07 PM on January 2, 2008

Its completely different hardware. If whir's story is true it probably has to due with a massive misconfiguration. You cant software update 1.1 to 2.0 the same way you cant put special gas in your car that will make your engine turbo charged.
posted by damn dirty ape at 2:53 AM on January 3, 2008

If you're planning to attach something that draws a lot of power (or several things that draw power at once), like, say, a hard drive, make sure you get one that has a separate plug for the electrical outlet.
posted by anaelith at 6:32 AM on January 3, 2008