Annoying System Tray Icon (SP3)

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I have just had to install XP to recover from a W2K system crash. Since installing, I am periodically (several times a day) having an icon appear in the system tray with a message telling me that some device could perform faster if it were attached to a USB 2.0 port. Since I do not have any USB 2.0 ports, this is not an option. The message does not have an option button to tell it to go away and not come back. As soon as I click on the message or the icon, both of them disappear. Can anyone tell me how to turn off this annoying “feature?”

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Does this MSKB article help ??

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Thanks, and it does sound like my problem. However, the fix does not work. I get to step 3 in the fix and there is no “Advanced” tab or any “Advanced” button on any of the tabs. Therefore I can’t find the check box to click on.

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You are double-clicking the correct controller and getting a Properties window opening though – yes?

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In the image below, I double clicked on the first device with Uinversal in its name and got what is in the second image. I also tried double clicking on all of the devices, none of them had the Advanced tab.

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Have you installed SP2 for XP yet?

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

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The CD I have came with SP2 included. I think that the only patch I do not have installed yet is IE 7.

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Unless it’s because you are not logged in as an administrator?

But what is that USB device with the yellow question mark at the very top of your picture…? It looks like it may be a card reader or something?

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Your guess is as good as mine! I don’t have a clue what it is.

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My guess is that it’s a USB CompactFlash Type II Reader.

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That is a possibility, but even if I knew I don’t think it would help my original problem.

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Does anyone else have any ideas how to turn off this annoying icon?

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I’d be interested to know what that ‘unknown’ USB device is – it may be having an effect.
Can you open it up, click on the driver tab, and click on ‘Update driver’ – sometimes a new driver is automatically found. Otherwise, any info on the device could help. (It looks like it may be under ‘Network Adapters’.)

I’m working on the assumption that if there is an ‘unknown USB device’ it may be causing a wobbly in the system.

Do you have any other yellow marks on any other devices?

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Correction – as per the graphic in this MS USB FAQ article, the unknown device is likely to be under “Other devices”…

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It is a San Disk Compact Falsh reader that was plugged into the hub when I installed XP. The drivers I have for it were never installed since they are for Win 97 – Win 2000 and will not install on XP. I have ordered a new reader which has not been delivered yet.

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>”It is a San Disk Compact Falsh reader that was plugged into the hub when I installed XP. ”

That is probably the problem. It likely caused some sort of glitch in your initial installation. Is it still plugged in ?? If not, what happens when you do plug it in and then try to plug in another USB device ??

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It is still plugged in. I have just recently installed two new USB devices with no problems.

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I don’t believe that it will have any negative effect on your installation of new devices. But, if you unplug the card reader or the hub do you still get the error when plugging in another USB device ??

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At the time of your question I would have suggested the same as Doc did (Advanced tab on controllers), and Leif later showed.

This problem has been around for some time, since we got high speed devices, still is around as you experienced, depending on older and newer hardware in mix (or HW with no need for speed). And the above has been the solution.

As you may have seen if searching on the subject, you’re not alone in having no advanced tab (people tend to find it out when trying just the solution above). And … when people don’t know, they speculate. Some have thought that it maybe isn’t included in the WinXP Home edition, this is wrong.

Some have tried a pre-SP2 trick. I understand from your reply to Dave that you are on SP2, and I can see that in your screen shot. But your subject says SP3 (isn’t out for XP, and is old for w2k, as I’m sure you know); by they way, did you install XP on a clean HDD and did you gather Win XP drivers for your hardware?

Anyhow, before service pack 2 there was no Details tab in Device Manager by default. To get it, one set a temporary environment variable:
-Open a command prompt
-Type: set DEVMGR_SHOW_DETAILS=1, and press Enter
-Type: start devmgmt.msc, and press Enter
Now it was possible to track details about the hardware. This is default in SP2 and is shown in your and Leif’s screen shots.

Some say this worked for them (the above is meant to show the Details tab not the Advanced so it shouldn’t work) and some say it don’t. Other suggest to remove the power saving check box at the root hub, but I don’t think that’s the solution.

I think it is related to drivers and devices connected, i.e. things installed. They can change some things under Properties in the Device Manager. For ex. the advanced tab on NIC’s can change a bit. The problem is that for most standard PC’s you don’t update USB drivers (IMHO), the one in SP2 is OK, so nothing to change to. If you had known to look for this (in DM), maybe after OS install when installing different drivers; IDE, SATA, NIC, Sound graphic, you maybe had seen the Adv. tab go away.

The above also leads to: apparently a lot who have Intel Application Accelerator (which installs dedicated ATA drivers) installed can’t find the advanced tab when looking at the IDE devices. Do you have IAA? But for USB drivers Intel point (as all do, mentioned above) at MSFT. You could try to check all drivers, as the question mark indicate it isn’t over as I think you know.

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