I installed a 5 port VIA USB 2.0 High Speed PCI controller card into a machine that only had USB 1.1.

The install went perfectly. Upon boot up XP SP2 recognized the device, installed all the appropriate drivers automatically and the Device Manager shows the enhnanced high speed card as installed without warnings or errors and "working."

Now when I insert a SanDisk USB Flash Drive or a Lexar JumpDrive (both 512 MB and work in other machines), it says found new hardware, installs it as "unknown device" and it says it's ready. Of course the USB drive is not usable and is not in Explorer. I've uninstalled it and reinstalled it, I've had Windows search for updated drivers, Windows says I have the latest drivers. What else can I do?

Thanks,
Sandor

Did you install the VIA USB drivers?

Are they seen in the disk manager?

Do yourself a favor BACKUP!

No to VIA USB drivers; XP SP2 automatically installed the requisite VIA USB drivers after PNP recognized the hardware.

The disk manager does not see it.

Interestingly, I plugged the SanDisk Cruzer jumpdrive in and Device manager says the driver is not installed. This device should not require any XP driver. In fact when I try to install a legacy driver, it says Win 2000 and Win XP does not require any driver.

Puzzling.

You could try having the Disk Manager 'rescan disks'. 'Maybe' he will pick them up.
Not recognizing (or losing) hard drives (especially external ones) seems to be a quirk of XP. It happened to me (with an internal drive) and I finally gave up and restored a backup of the OS, which recognized the drive.

Do yourself a favor BACKUP!

Maybe you should've checked the VIA website or the CD that came with your card:

"The VIA USB2 driver package below can be installed after the Microsoft driver to further improve device compatibility"

http://www.viaarena.com/default.asp...

Where does the flash drive show up in Device Manager, under disk drives or something else?

VIA Chipset Cards are unreliable, buy a card with the NEC chipset.

I've had trouble with VIA chipset USB 2.0 cards too and prefer NEC chipset cards.

When I have encountered this problem with a VIA chipset card, I reinstalled the MOBO drivers (SIS chipset on this MOBO) and the problem resolved.

Thank you jam for stating the obvious. I should've checked the VIA website, where I found this from Microsoft ......
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=...
It looks as if this hot fix will resolve my issue; the VIA USB2 driver package did not help.

Thank you Badboy for your suggestion as I will try this first. And finally if all else fails, I will go with the NEC chipset. I'm using that in another machine with no problems.

You problem may be with the USB Flash drive, and your USB 2.0 support is actually fine.

If you see one or more entries in Device Manager - Universal Serial Bus Controllers
for an Enhanced, or USB 2.0, USB controller, or simliar, there is nothing wrong with your USB 2.0.
If you don't see that, or if there are one or more entries to do with a USB controller or similar that have a yellow ! beside them, your USB 2.0 support is not working.
e.g. I just installed a 5 port USB 2.0 card.

Device Manager - Universal Serial Bus controllers

Lines that were already there for the mboard Via USB 1.x support (two controllers, 4 ports; 2 built in, 2 by connecting a 2 port wiring adapter to a mboard header.
Two of: Via 5 or later USB Host Controller
Two of: USB Root Hub (supports 2 USB ports on each)

New entries in Device Manager - Universal Serial Bus controllers
Two of: NEC PCI to USB Open Host Controller
(that is the support for USB 1.x; supports all 5 ports)
USB 2.0 PCI Host Card
USB 2.0 Root Hub Device
(supports all 5 ports)
.......

If you don't see evidence that the USB 2.0 support is there and working (you may see only lines similar to the first two), then......

Whenever you install Windows from scratch, you must load all the drivers for your mboard including the Via 4-in-1 drivers (now called Hyperion) in order for Windows to properly recognize everything built into your mboard - that includes USB 2.0 controller support if your mboard has USB 2.0, but your mboard didn't have that.

USB 2.0 cards or onboard USB 2.0 have both USB 1.x and USB 2.0 support.
In your case, the Via USB 1.x controllers were probably recognized by XP SP2 no problem, but the USB 2.0 controllers may not have been, especially if you did not install the mboard chipset drivers after the last time Setup was run..
Try installing the Via 4-in-1 (Hyperion)drivers (again?) - they will also install support for the Via 2.0 controllers on the card.
They are on your mboard CD, or you can go to www.viaarena.com and get the latest drivers - Chipset or Platform.

Thanks for everyone's help. I have reinstalled the Intel 850 chipset drivers and updated the BIOS and the problem resolved. All my jumpdrives and 250 GB external hard drive is recognized. USB 2.0 is unbelievably faster than the integrated USB 1.1. Anywhere from 5 to 25 times faster.

Great!!!!!!

That's good news you've fixed your problem, but....

Flashing your bios is not a cure-all.
You should never flash your bios unless you find specific info such as in release notes where you get bios updates that flashing the bios will cure your problem.
It is extremely unlikely there would be any bugs in the bios code that would prevent your USB from working.
You are taking a big risk when you flash your bios - if the flash fails, and/or the flash chip physically fails while flashing (this is COMMON - these cheap flash chips can only be flashed an unpredictable small number of times), you will have a mboard that will not boot.

I don't make it a practice to flash the BIOS, however, one of the suggested approaches to USB problems in the VIA support website is to flash the BIOS, so I tried that. In fact I might add that after I reinstalled the Intel 850 chipset drivers, I was still getting an error, albeit a different one. Whereas before I was getting "unknown device" recognized after the chipset drivers were installed, I was getting "composite device" recognized. So in point of fact, the last update, the BIOS update, certainly fixed my problem. Perhaps reinstalling the Intel 850 chipset drivers were unnnecessary, but I'm not changing anything.

Everybody and their dog suggests flashing the bios, but that almost always doesn't help.
If you look on the mboard makers sites, they always say never to flash your bios unless you must.

Installing the chipset drivers will never do any harm, except in the extremely rare case of there being bugs in them, and even then you can load another version and everything is fine again. Most "drivers" for chipsets don't actually load driver files - they are often just *.inf files - information files - that tell Windows what settings to use for which device drivers Windows, in this case Windows XP SP2, already has.