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I purchased my TrackIR 4 very recently but there is something that bugs me that probably affects the performance of the device:

Whenever I connect my TrackIR 4 to USB (I have USB 1.0,1.1 and 2.0) I get a ballon message as follows:

"This usb device can perform faster if you connect it to a hi-speed usb 2.0 port"

I took my brother's external hard drive which uses USB 2.0 and it connects fine without any popups like that.

I did notice something interesting when comparing TrackIR and the hard drive in device manager. I have 2 USB hubs.
One appears to be only 1.0, 1.1 the other 2.0.

Whenever I plug in Track IR it always chooses the 1.0, 1.1 USB hub but whenever I plug in my brothers 2.0 USB hard drive it chooses 2.0 USB hub. The only difference between the USB devices is that my brothers hard drive is externally powered.

How do I make Track IR 4 use USB 2.0? Will TrackIR 4 performance greately decline running on USB 1.0, 1.1? I did notice that TrackIR will freeze up sometimes .. actually quite frequently when I look down to the left.

My motherboard/OS:
ASUS M2N-E Chipset nVidia nForce 570 Ultra MCP (BIOS - flashed to most current - 0802)
Windows XP Service Pack 2


Any input is appreciated.

Luke

Hi Luke your problem is not unknown, though it is not TIR related but down to XP SP2. SP2 was supposed to over write the USB drivers to one that includes USB2 (up from USB 1.1) but in some cases it did not. To compouned the matter the update that was supposed to rectify the problem did not. So thousands were left running USB 1.1 not 2.0 as they believed, including me which is why I know about it.

Head over to http://support.microsoft.com/kb/822603 and scoll down to down load 322603 package. If you run that it will over write the driver manually.

Happy Easter

Hi there,

Thanks for the reply. I did download and try to execute the 822603 hotfix but it will not let me run it since I have SP2 installed. It says this update is for SP1 only.

In device manager I did verify that my USB system files are up to par and all were 5.1.2600.2180 which is great but one usbd.sys is still 5.1.26000.0 <-- which is older. Do you think this is a problem?
What does it say on your system when you look at the version of this file?

What I am still confused about is that why is my brothers Hard Drive which is USB 2.0 running as USB 2.0 device and why is the Track IR treated as 1.0/1.1 device? It doesn't matter what port I plug the devices in Windows makes the decision to use the device as 1.1 or 2.0.

Do you have any ideas?

Below are screen shots of my device manager USB config.
[image]http://dxgames.game-host.org/DeviceMgr.JPG[/image]
[image]http://dxgames.game-host.org/USBDrivers.JPG[/image]

Hi Luke sorry for the wrong link. Try this http://support.microsoft.com/kb/873169 as it is the one that is for your problem. No excuse as tiredness does not count and I gave you the wrong page. Like you I had one USB that was older than the rest and I was doing my nut trying to sort it. If that does not work come back and I/we will see what else it could be but it is worth trying the above first.

I am running Vista Home with 64 for emergencies untill my G25 wheel has a driver that works and then it will be full time 64bit.

Good Luck

Hi again,

Thanks for continous support. I did the steps outlined in the specified article but wihtout success (when I was trying to update my driver Windows insisted that the driver that is installed is most suitable).

Through observation I was further able to learn something new:

As you saw in previous screen shot of device manager I have 2 USB hubs. Each is setup with different version:
[image]http://dxgames.game-host.org/USBHubs.JPG[/image]

Whenever I attach a device it is either assigned to one or the other hub based on device capabilities.

All USB 2.0 devices (like my brothers hard drive) are assigned to hub with version 5.1.2600.2180 and all USB 1.0/1.1 devices are assigned to 5.1.2600.0 hub.

This I was able to learn from plugging in the Track IR and my brothers hard disk and compare how they appear in device manager.

I am not sure if there is a problem with my Windows or the setup is by design.

Thank you again for you support.

Luke

Just a quick idea Luke whilst I do some searching for you. Can you by any chance use your keyboard and/or mouse via PS2?

If you cant no matter. When in you are in device manager disconect every USB device apart from your keyboard and mouse.

If you can. Disconect every USB device including the root hub.

Both:- once the relivant action has been done re-boot your PC and all of your USB devices will be forced to restart and up-date to the latest version of your USB driver on your PC.

I will continue to have a look to see if it is something related to your motherboards handling of USB as I do not know anything about Nforce based motherboards.

Edit:-
Do you have high speed USB set up in your BIOS?

I have come across this issue, with Nvidia chipsets, more than once. The issue is just in how the USB detects and reports the driver, as it relates to the TrackIR device, and some other devices as well.

It won't effect the gameplay, or response of the TrackIR unit.

Have you tried turn off any kind of power save feature for your USB ports?

In the "Device Manager" you can right click the "USB Hub"(s), that show, and then select properties. On the power management tab, uncheck the box that allows the computer to turn off the USB port to save power (i.e. uncheck the box). Sometimes that has an impact on the connectivity of the devices.

Hi Vincent,

I think with your first paragraph you hit the nail on its head so to speak. That is exactly what is happening and had me going crazy.

I did turn off the power saving feature but it made no difference.

The game play is quite smooth now (sometimes tracking is affected when I look down to the left but I think it is so because the clip is pointing down and the sensor can not pick up the infra red light) and if you think that this will not affect the response of Track IR I am less worried.

By the way I am a computer programmer so writting software is my job. Although I never wrote a device driver I have some understanding of the Windows device model. Do you know why my motherboard is so clueless? Is it possible to make the driver more obvious to Windows, that it is a 2.0 device?

Thanks,

Luke

Not that I know of, in regards to the driver. I'm not sure why it seems to be only effecting, or reporting the issue, on Nvidia chipsets, and then only on ones with erratic combinations of drivers and bios settings. At one point, I had a customer that reformatted the system, and reinstalled, and the error message went away. In the end though, it isn't hampering the TrackIR unit, or the response from the system during gameplay. It's like that little fly, that just gets annoying.....

Thx Vince!

Btw, I don't usually do this but it is well served here:

Your product is da bomb. I am really enjoying the experience playing Flight Simulator X with Track IR. I can not imagine playing without it. Like other testemonials stated once you use it you never go back. Dido on that.

Luke