I need something that allows me to see how much bandwidth each usb
device uses and which usb ports have lots of extra bandwidth.

I have a LOT of USB devices. I have 5 USB ports from my PC (1 card and
1 port from the motherboard. I had 2, but one of them got fried.). I
probably have about 20 or so USB devices total.

However, after I recently added some new devices and moved some things
around I've started having problems with some of the devices. My
PowerMate sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. My usb keyboard
sometimes repeats slowly (when I hold down a key) and sometimes it
repeats at normal speed.

So, I'd like to know which usb ports on my system have extra bandwidth
left over and which ones are maxed out. I want to move some of the
devices around so that everything is spread out so nothing is starved
for usb bandwidth.

I'm using Win2k.

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Request for Question Clarification by supermacman-ga on 13 Nov 2003 21:07 PST

It doesn't matter if you have shared USB ports. You need to find out
if this is true -- does your motherboard put the USB ports on the same
bus? If so, distributing devices over two ports will have minimal
speed benefit. If you have independent USB ports (independent buses),
then you may consider distributing your devices.

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Clarification of Question by mxnmatch-ga on 14 Nov 2003 12:21 PST

One time when I modified the settings on my USB sound card so that the
sound quality was higher, I got a popup with info about bandwidth
usage which said that it required too much bandwidth. However, I don't
know how to get that popup without purposefully overloading a port. I
moved the sound card to a different usb port (one of the 4 port on the
pci card) and it worked fine with the higher sound quality settings.
So that seems to indicate that at least some of the ports are
separate.

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Request for Question Clarification by endo-ga on 14 Nov 2003 12:35 PST

Hi,

You might want to consider getting an internal USB 2.0 card, this
would increase the aggregate bandwidth of your USB port, and would
probably solve your problem.

Thanks.
endo

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Request for Question Clarification by endo-ga on 29 Nov 2003 15:55 PST

Hi,

Have you tried moving the devices around?

Some of them might not go well with others on given ports.

I'm having trouble believing now that you don't have enough bandwidth
on a USB 2.0 port. Some device along the way is either hogging it all
due to some bug or incompatibility. Try isolating this device on its
own port.

Thanks.
endo

Helpful:
http://www.hhdsoftware.com/usbmon.html

Possibly useful:
http://www.usbman.com/WebDrivers/USBview/

The PCI card I was referring to is actually a USB 2.0 card. However, I
think the problem might be compatibility with USB 1.1. I don't know
for sure, but the 2 devices I have had problems with are definitely
USB 1.1 devices. It's hard to say for sure though because I don't use
a lot of the other game controllers all that often. However, I went
into the BIOS and turned on USB 1.1 compatibility mode. That seems to
have cured the problem with my stuttering USB keyboard, but I'm
assuming the BIOS settings wouldn't be connected at all to the
settings on the USB 2.0 PCI card.

I don't like having compatibility mode on because it forces me to
reboot whenever I remove and plug back in certain devices.

However, the problem with the on again off again working of my
PowerMate is still there. I don't know though. That may be just an
issue with that device or it may be that I need to somehow turn on USB
1.1 compatibility mode for the PCI card.