VGA-165 Adapters stopped working

I have an HP 6005 Small form factor. Windows 7 Pro with 8gigs of ram. For about 3 months I had 4 monitors working on this setup, 1 using onboard VGA, 3 using the USB-VGA-165. It worked near flawlessly. I restarted my computer to change a setting in the BIOS (ended up not making the change) When my pc started up again, only the VGA adapter worked and my pc started constantly making the alert sound it makes when you attach a USB device. I unplugged all the adapters which made the noise stop. I could plug in two of the adapters without the alert sound coming back however when I plugged in the third, that one specifically, the sound would come back. During that process none of the monitors would display. I finally uninstalled the driver using the utility from your website and installed the lastest driver. When I plugged them in, one worked but the other two would not install, kept saying the device was unplugged. One gives intermitent alert sounds while the other will give continous alert sounds when plugged in. I have also tried using different usb mini cables to no avail. Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

Jon

Hi Jon,

Thanks for contacting us! The symptoms here sound like a USB bus power issue (the ports the USB devices are attached to are for some reason no longer delivering the expected 500mA of power for a USB 2.0 device) or a BIOS setting issue.

Quick questions to start:

  1. Is the alert sound you describe only at boot time (before the Windows splash screen, when the BIOS is running)? Or when Windows has booted? If it’s within Windows, is there an error message that’s getting generated?

  2. Do you happen to have a powered USB hub around? Does the problem still happen with the USB adapters attached through the powered hub?

  3. You mention that right when the problem started, you were changing BIOS settings, but didn’t save any changes. Another (different) problem could be a change in BIOS settings related to USB that’s now causing the BIOS to get confused by all the attached USB devices. I don’t know what settings your BIOS has for USB, but if you’re comfortable futzing a little with those settings, it may undo what’s changed …

Thanks for digging in here to figure out what changed, and letting us know on 1, 2, and any other clues.

Thanks for your patience!
Bernie

“Do you happen to have a powered USB hub around? Does the problem still happen with the USB adapters attached through the powered hub?”

I found a powered USB hub and running two of the monitors through it did indeed resolve the problem.

Thanks for your quick help on this. MUCH appreciated. Also would like to say: I really liked being able to use my Google account to sign up for your service instead of having to make yet another account.