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General discussion

USB power surge error when no USB plugged in

Dec 6, 2004 4:48AM PST

I have Win XP, recently installed Service Pack 2, and started getting an error message which says something to the effect of Power surge on USB port. I can open the message and I have two choices, which are "reset" or "close". This happens almost every time I send a job to the printer. I have NO peripherals connected to either of the USB ports.
This machine is old: HP Pavilion 6535
ANY SUGGESTIONS???

Discussion is locked

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Re: USB power surge error when no USB plugged in
Dec 6, 2004 5:18AM PST

This is not unusual if some motherboard drivers were not installed. Older machines run into this because Microsoft does not fetch all the drivers. Owners are perplexed since no errrors may show up in the device manager.

This Cognac based system is widely known for barely being compatible with XP. As such, all I can write is...

"Good luck with that."

Cheers,
Bob

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Windows XP USB error message
Dec 29, 2004 2:29AM PST

I have also seen the error message:
" A USB Device has malfunctioned and has exceeded the power limits..." with out any USB devices connected.
This error message has been noticed on three different ACER notebooks. An ACER support rep. sent me a short term solution supposedly suggested by Microsoft.
"Turn off the error messages from Device Manager
=> USB Host Controller => Advanced Tab => check mark
"Don't tell me about USB errors"

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Windows XP USB error message
Jan 3, 2005 4:18PM PST

I'd also be interested in an actual fix, rather than turning off USB warning messages. I'm getting the same error messages on two Sony Vaio's, a Compaq Presario & two Dell Dimension's. All the computers are less than two years old & the problem has only appeared since the XP SP-2 update. Two are XP-Home & three are XP-Pro.

The Dell's were XP-Pro when they shipped, one of the Sony's has an XP-Pro upgrade. As far as I can tell the error message transcends whether the machine is running XP-Pro or XP-home & whether it's an upgrade, began as XP-Pro, or XP-Home.

It doesn't seem to be causing an harm to the system, but the endless warnings are a pain ...

Anyone know of a fix (other than turning off the USB error messages?)

Thanks.

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Actual fix.
Jan 3, 2005 8:15PM PST

Replace motherboard and force the motherboard maker to stand up to the issue.

For many, this will not be an option.

Bob

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SOLUTION : ACTUAL FIX !!
Jun 29, 2005 12:14AM PDT

Hi i had a similar problem. I got two (20 gig) USB 2.5 inches HDD with no external power connection except the USB power connection. My laptop(Dell Inspiron 8600) kept saying power surge problem.

I used to get similar messages. Thought a lot but couldnt get it to work.

I solved the problem myself. It was so simple but difficult to think about the solution. Now i can enjoy hours of HDD access without any error notifications.

Listen .. The error message says Power surge , Hub exceeded power limits. So our USB HDD needs more power or say current. Right now we are giving it current from only one source -- 1 USB port ( output current = 500mA ) max. our USB HDD has no external power source. Its input current rating is 10mA but somehow I dont know why 500mA is insufficient for it. So we need more current. EUREKA!! Why not give it current from 2 USB ports instead of just one ? Well u must be thinking how ?

I got this wire from the company i got the external enclosure for the HDD from which is a USB generic wire . It has 2 USB plugs at one end and a single one at the other end. I plugged in those two plugs in two USB ports of my laptop and the single usb plug in my ext hdd and Carambaa !! It worked like a loco. There were no ERROR messages since then.
my problem disappeared forever.

Now i can access my HDD without any problem. The error notification stopped becoz now the HDD is getting the power it requires.

You guys can try this until Microsoft comes up with something new in their OSes.

If you need a picture of the USB cable i m using then send an email to me at sam12shri@yahoo.com and i can email back the picture to u.

See ya later
Sameer Potdar
sam12shri@yahoo.com
vande mataram

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Swing and a miss
May 26, 2009 6:30PM PDT

...nice advice, but the original question states that NO devices are plugged in.

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powersurge on usb
Jul 19, 2009 6:01AM PDT

I had this problem for awhile,followed numerous suggestions from different websites but still didn't solve the problem, nothing was being recognised by my USB ports and was getting the powersurge balloon popping up, eventually i got hold of an XP disc and did a repair with it(press f8 to agree then repair), after rebooting the pc found all usb peripherals and installed them, still dont know what caused the problem but it seems to be resolved now