Today I was working on a XP Home SP2 machine equipped with 6 rear and 2 front USB Ports which have been functioning correctly. I inserted a 2.0Gb USB Flash Drive, that I have used on many computers including my own, into a front port and received a message about "USB Power Surge" and the screen went blank and the machine shut down and restarted with the USB Drive installed. The Removable drive is not recognised and not found. This happened a number of times and then finally worked OK. Other USB devices are working fine. In all the time I have been involved with computers I have never encountered this before. Can anyone assist with a fix or thoughts on this.
Hi, to be honest with you this is something I have experienced a lot. I know that the ports on the front of the PC are connected via a USB header on the main board, and I always have this issue. I just plug it into the rear ports. The reason for this is that any US?B port that draws more than 200mA of current will trigger this warning to inform you, so you can prevent damage to the PC. The USB ports on the rear tend to be hard wired and have a slightly higher current rating than the ones on the side. USB ports on keyboards, monitors, or from headers on the motherboard etc all tend to be low powered ports. On some of the later motherboards, you have 2x USB headers, one is USB v1.0 / v1.1, and the other is usually USB v2.0. I would check this as the USB v2.0 tends to provide more current to the port eliminating your problem. Let us know how you get on.
Thank you Phil2000, I will check it out next time I visit this machine. Seems very odd because my motherboard ans setup is identical to the problem one and the problem is not present on mine with this USB Drive. Thank you
try replacing the power supply or unplugging all other usb leads and see if you get the same response
