I came into my office to find my XP machine shutdown and that awful smell of an over heated component. When I restarted the system, I got a message that said Power Surge on Hub Port and some words about a USB device exceeding it's power limits. I unplugged the only external USB device, an HP 2170 printer, but the error kept popping up. I was given the option to reset the port, but it clicking the Reset button in the dialog box didn't help. I went into the device manager and found that if I disabled the last of the four USB Root Hub devices, the error message stopped. Disabling any of the first three USB Root Hubs did not help. So I asked myself, "What happened and what did I disable?" Here's where things get really confusing... I plugged the printer back into the original USB port but it would not print. I then tried all of the other USB ports (4 on the back and 2 on the front) but none of them worked either. I then went back into the device manager and enabled the 4th USB Root Hub, which caused the Power Surge error to pop up, but I was now able to print. So after a little more troubleshooting I was able to determine the following: One of the 4 USB ports on the back of the machine appears to be bad, but here's the weird part: If I plug the printer cable into any of the 5 working ports, I have to enable to 4th USB Root Hub to get the system to recognize the printer, but I can then disable it again still be able to print. It doesn't matter which of the 5 working ports I use. In order to get the system to see the printer after I move the printer cable to a different port, I have to toggle the 4th USB Root Hub device. This causes the error to pop up, but it goes away as soon as I disable the 4th USB Root Hub. Can someone explain why I have to do this? I'd also like to know why one single port, which wasn't even being used, decided to fry. Thanks for any insight you can offer.

my advice, turn off ALL usb ports, disable them in the bios before it gets worse ... buy a pci usb/firewire card ($20 or so) to limit your damage. if you just want to get rid of the alert, right click START ,choose properties, choose taskbar, hide inactive icons, then customize and select power surge and set to ALWAYS HIDE Today's subliminal thought is: 'Calm down ... it's only ones and zeros.'