# P4V800 Too many USB Root hubs in device manager



## MRKisThatKid (Aug 13, 2004)

Windows XP SP2
Asus P4V800-X
Default USB Bios Settings (bios revision 1005a)
1 usb device (logitech mouse)
Latest Hyperion drivers at time of writing

I have "USB Root Hub" listed 5 times in device manager.
4 of the entries have 2 ports
1 entry has 8 ports

Last time i checked this mobo didn't have 16 usb ports! lol
Here's the thing, should XP SP2 list 1 root hub with 8 ports or 4 root hubs with 2 ports a piece??

Oh and, how do i fix this?


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## clintfan (Sep 4, 2003)

Hi MRKisThatKid, and welcome to the forum! I am catching up on some unreplied posts which occurred during my vacation.

I am fairly sure the situation you describe is normal. I can only extrapolate from how the Intel chipset works, and the VIA USB driver's Readme.doc file. (BTW it looks like the downloadable USB driver package, although isn't listed by Asus as being for WinXP, _does_ appear to contain WinXP-SP1 content.)

With the VIA, again like the Intel we have 8 USB 2.0 ports. If you switch your DM display to "View- devices by connection" what you should see is 4 logical "VIA USB Universal Host Controllers", each with 1 "USB Root Hub" underneath supporting 2 devices, plus one additional USB2 controller, again with a root hub. This, I think, is as you already observed. The name of the USB2 controller may be slightly different than the names of the others; in your case it should probably read "VIA USB 2.0 Enhanced Host Controller", where _Enhanced_ is the usual distinguishing keyword. 

I suspect that the root hub under the USB2 controller isn't a _real_ hub, at least not something you can plug devices into. Rather, I suspect it's a "virtual" hub, placed there to logically satisfy Windows' driver architecture expectations. On my Intel ICH5R I cannot tell how many "ports" are under the USB2 controller's root hub. You say yours has 8, but on mine I can't tell. I suspect the number of ports that appear, might vary depending either on the architecture of the chip providing the USB (VIA VT8237 in your case, Intel 82801ER in my case), or maybe depending on how many USB 2.0 devices you've connected. And again, these aren't real ports.

With the Intel, some mobos do offer BIOS options to choose the number of active "real" USB ports. If we choose 6, for example, then USB ports 7 & 8 drop out, and the DM will show one fewer USB controller and the hub under it also disappears. The AMIBIOS in your mobo offers the same ability: under Advanced- USB Configuration you can set the "USB 1.1 Ports Configuration to "2 USB ports", 4, 6, 8, or "Disabled". If you want to get rid of some of the devices, you can change this setting: 2 enables only rear-panel ports 1 & 2; 4 will enable rear ports 1 & 2 plus 3 & 4; and so on. USB56 and USB78 come from headers on your mobo. Bear in mind that disabling USB ports won't really help you or hurt you.

Anyway in summary I think what your DM is showing is probably normal.
Hope this helps,

-clintfan


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