Weird ASUS USB-N66 problem (really weird)

spsssw

Honorable
Nov 24, 2013
3
0
10,510
hello

I'm having a really annoying problem. My wireless USB adapter WILL ALWAYS disconnect itself AND ALL OTHER USB DEVICES whenever I download something in fast speed.

Here is what happened:

I was downloading guild wars 2 (it's really a big download, 10GB)
The speed was great 3.5MB/s, BUT after 20 seconds or so, asus usb-n66 disconnected itself and all other USB devices got disconnected too, my mouse, keyboard, card reader, every USB devices were disconnected (and they never reconnect themselves)

I had to restart my PC

After a painful restart, I tried to download via a LAN cable ... no problem, everything was OK, no USB disconnect no nothing.

Puzzled, I wanted to find out why is asus usb-n66 causing all USB devices, including itself, to disconnect

Here is what I tried,
Using Chrome, I downloaded CABAL online mannual patch (1.7GB) the speed was great. 2MB/s. BUT again all USB devices disconnect after about 20s and I had to restart the PC

Using Chrome, I watch a few fullHD videos on youtube, everything was fine, nothing bad happened. ....hmmm strange. (I streamed 3 fullHD videos at the same time on 3 tabs)

Using Chrome, I downloaded a windows 7 SP1 patch from microsoft, speed was ok, around 1MB/s. No USB problems this time.

Using Chrome, I downloaded iTunes, great speed 5MB/s. BUT every USB devices got disconnected after 10s or so. ..hmmm I rebooted my PC

Using firefox, I repeated the previous 4 steps, and i got exactly same results.

Then I repeated the 4 steps above again, nut this time I'm connected to the internet via LAN cable ...NO problems at all, everything went smooth and flawless

My hardware,
msi 960G45 board
fx4100
ati 7770
8gb ram
ms wireless mouse and keyboard

I'm using window 8.1 and it is updated
asus usb-n66 is using the latest driver
every other drivers for others devices are updated

... what might be casing is strange problem?
 
On the face of it, it sounds like the USB bus (which is shared) is being flooded and stomping on the other USB devices. But @ 3.5MB/s (28Mbps), that’s only a small fraction of its capacity (assuming USB 2.0, 480Mbps). Try disconnecting the other USB devices one by one to see if it's a conflict w/ some other specific USB device.

This is why I’m not a big fan of USB (or even PCI/PCI-e) wireless adapters; too many dependencies on the OS (drivers). I prefer wireless ethernet bridges instead. No dependencies at all. You can reuse it for all kinds of things, as long as it has an ethernet port.