RealGomer said:
For some reason my Canon i550 USB printer will not work. When I try to
load
the drivers, I get a message the port is not found. I've tried in three
different USB ports on my Gigabyte GA-K8NS-Pro mobo running WinXP Pro SP2.
When I ran a hardware analyzer, it said the device was not enumerated. All
other USB devices work fine. Suggestions? The Registry show the i550 all
over
the place.
This is a common but subtle problem. The printer is most likely a USB1.1
device (there being little point in making the USB interface 480 Mbps one).
Unfortunately, the manufacturers like to get good reviews for the speed of
the printer and consequently it is configured to use the USB bus system in
'isochronous' mode (basically the error correction is sacrificed for speed).
Unfortunately, isochronous mode requires the operating system to provide a
guaranteed minimum bandwidth (which was intended for time critical
peripherals - which a printer isn't). If the OS cannot do this, then the
printer does not get enumerated - no error message, nothing. It just
appears dead. Thus the driver installation can't find the printer port.
Try installing the printer with all other USB devices disconnected (though
it still won't work once they are reconnected). Alternatively, you can try
connecting the printer to a *USB2 hub* connected to a *USB2 port* (that is
one that supports 480 Mbps transmission). The hub will upconvert the 12
mbps datastream to 480 Mbps for onward communication with the root hub.
This should allow the bandwidth to be allocated. Note: that the root hub
won't do this.
One of the features of USB2 is that if such an isochronous device is
encountered, the USB host can reconfigure the peripheral into 'bulk' mode
which does not suffer the same limitation.