Stumped with USB sticks

[testmaniac]

I have a problem with one of my pc's when I use some USB flsash memory sticks. The pc runs XP Pro SP3 and everything is alright except the following: I have about 8 or 9 USB sticks with various sizes and different manufacturers ( Kingston, Super Talent, Sony ..). All these sticks are FAT32 USB 2.0 standard flash memory.

Whenever I plug any of the sticks into this pc ( on the front of the case), the system only sees it as USB 1.1 and the windows issues that message about sticks being able to run as 2.0

What confuses me is the fact that all these sticks used to run as 2.0 on this pc until about three weeks ago with no problems. Removing the sticks, I always use 'safely remove hardware" method. My av is Kaspersky Internet security and also Malwarebytes' Anti malware. I have not done any major changes to the system or installed any software which would cause this problem. I know that USB 2.0 driver is loaded with SP1 so I can't see this being an o/s problem. I am really stumped and would hope someone could shine some light on this. Thanks.

 

[evongugg]

I bet if you connect them to the back ports you will not get that messsage.
It's probably the cables from your case to the motherboard unable to carry USB 2.0 causing that message to come up.
Also check the bios USB settings.

 

[Guest]

Could be that the USB hub on the front of the computer is a USB 1.1 hub.

If your speeds of datatransfer exceed 2MB/s you're ok,and can ignore the message!
USB1.1 speeds are approx 12Mbits which is about 1,5MB/s

 

[testmaniac]

Three weeks both USB ports on the front of the pc were working as 2.0. I re-formatted on of the 16 GB Super Talent USB sticks and that's when the problem seemed to have started. I've Googled many pages without any idea where to start. The mobo is an older Asus (P5G-VM) and reloaded all the drivers hoping it would help. Unfortunately, it did not.