USB hub intermittent working

Sat, 19 Feb 2005 11:39:29 +0800

I have a 4 port Belkin USB Hub connected to one of the USB ports on my TiPB 867, 10.3.8, 768 RAM. All of the hub's 4 ports are used [printer, scanner, camera flash card reader, wireless optical mouse receiver] and all of these peripherals work fine. Sometimes [not always and with no discernible pattern that I can see] when I reboot, startup after a complete shutdown or wake from sleep the hub does not work, ie the four little green lights on the hub to indicate its 4 ports are alive do not light up and none of the four attached peripherals work. Power indicator light remains lit. If I detach the hub's connector cord from the computer's USB port and then reconnect it the hub's indicator lights light up and the hub is working again. The hub is externally powered. All connector cords between the hub and the peripherals and the computer are a firm fit. The computer's other USB port is connected to an external Mac keyboard which always works immediately after any reboot etc. I have alternated the keyboard and hub connectors between the computer's USB ports but the behaviour remains the same - sometimes the hub "boots up" and sometimes it doesn't, but the keyboard always is OK. This behaviour did not start with 10.3.8 although I can not remember when it began; sometime prior to 10.3.7. Yes, I know I can prevent the problem by leaving the computer on 24/7 but I do have need to restart several times a week, sometimes several times a day. I thought perhaps there was a USB preference which may be corrupted but I could not find one and in anycase I have run one of the preference checker apps. I have also run Repair Permissions, Repair Disk, regularly run cron maintenance, Disk Warrior. Anyone have an insight into this intermittent USB connection? This is not a life threatening problem but a real pain to reconnect as I try to avoid plugging in/out port connectors as much as possible. I presume it is a software malfunction as the hub does work fine after I reconnect it to the computer and it was working OK continuously up until recently. Both recent OS updates 10.3.7 and 10.3.8 were loaded via combo updaters. 

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Peter Sealy
Thurgoona AUSTRALIA