USB 2.0 on an old pentium 3... AAAARGH!!

[Mug Funky]

okay, i've been trying to get this to work all day, but now i'm too drunk to post eloquently, so bear with me...

i bought a VIA VT6212L USB 2.0 card so i could plug in an external 200GB drive for capture purposes (i've got 270 mins of crap footage to edit and put on DVD, dammit).

my computer doesn't give me anything more than "unknown device" with a big yellow question mark. if i put it in another PCI slot, i get a permanent hang at windows loading screen (well... half and hour so far. i didn't leave it any longer). i try installing the drivers for it, and nothing at all happens.

i'm running win2k sp4 (sp2 earlier today, but i stupidly thought the "upgrade" would help matters) on a p3 733 mobo. i'm totally not up to buying a new mobo, as any changes i make to this house-of-cards machine is more risk that it'll stop being stable.

also (this is a more minor issue), my 200GB western digital HDD is only being seen as 128GB. i tried the workaround of disabling it in the BIOS and letting win2k handle it, but this didn't work in the slightest.

please, if anybody out there could help a poor, drunk, frustrated computer geek, i'd be eternally greatful, and promise to help you out with avisynth all you want :)

[niamh]

Well you need SP3 at least to see drives over 128 gb, so you had to upgrade (AND IIRC you need SP4 for usb 2).SP4 is fine, no worries there; I don't recall anything evil coming with it. Apparently, since you upgraded after installing the drive, you need to go to disk management where the rest would show as unallocated space.

On top of this, you need to have an ATA-133 IDE controller to access more than 137GB. Ultra ATA-100 will not do.
Other than that, you can try the Intel application accelerator (http://downloadfinder.intel.com/scripts-df/Product_Filter.asp?ProductID=663) to access drives bigger than 137 gb(128) (this applies to Intel chipsets 810, 810E, 810E2, 815, 815, 815E, 815EP, 815P, 820, 820E, 830M, 830MP, 830MG, 840, 845, 850, or 860)

/as well me remember when I put my 200 gb WD HD as IDE and lost 3/4 of my data,piece by piece, due to my old mobo and controller errors, so now it stays put in its usb external case ;)

As for the USB card, I remember too a full afternoon of hair tearing, but it turned out I hadn't slotted it in fully in, and I was sure I did...I got the same symptoms as you actually, but then I'm dumb enough :D . still, the hanging at boot makes me think it's not fully in (it nearly took a hammer to get there, I swear! - Well). Of course, after that, I had to install the drivers from the disc to get anywhere, cause, as you know, 2k is none too clever with new hardware, especially the "add new hardware" bit. I never got that to work.

Well, best of luck until the real tech help arrives to the rescue.

Edit: I forgot, you could flash your BIOS, this never hurts (unless it fails of course, then in a way, you never hurt again)

2nd Edit: I found this workaround for usb2 support in win2k from the M$ knowledge base (usb 2 support without SP): http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;319973#kb1
Wouldn't it be nice if one of their tips actually worked?

[dragongodz]

also how much have you got hardware plugged in ? any onboard stuff(audio, lan etc) ? not running out of IRQ's ?

just a thought. :)

[Arachnotron]

@Mug:

The SP4 upgrade was a good move to get USB 2 support. However, I personally have had nothing but trouble with via based cards. Try to trade it in for one with a NEC chip.

SP4 also adds support for drives larger than 128 Gb. You have to enable the support using a registry hack. The driver can do it, but for some reason needs to be switched on. You can even boot from a large HD as long as you keep the first partition under 128 Gb.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/305098/EN-US/

The funny thing is that XP gold had the same limitation. In SP1 it is on by default.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;303013

[Sirber]

Or, you could get a IDE PCI card and enable ATA-100(133). Your mobo sould be ATA-33 or ATA-66 if it's an old mobo.

[Shinigami-Sama]

I had hte same prob with my old amdk2 266 w/win98 I finaly got it to work sorta but it was only usb1.1 not usb capable I had to remove it start in safe mode and install it that way inorder to get it reqianize that it was a pci usb card
I also hadh te asme hanging problem sorta it hung if I started it up with hte flash drive in hte slot or I tried to move to much data
hope that helps bit