No USB 3 on Z220

[caorach]

I have a Z220 SFF machine currently running Win 10 and it has 4 USB 3 ports - i.e. there are 4 blue ports on the rear as per the manual and specification info.

I recently upgraded from Win 7 to Win 10 but the problem I'm seeing happened some time after the upgrade, and indeed I've seen USB 3 work briefly since the upgrade. While I can't rule out the upgrade as causing the fault it isn't as clear cut as working before the upgrade, not working after.  

When copying files between two external USB 3  HDD I was noticing that speeds were slower than I would expect at around 18MB/s.

However, in the past few weeks and totally randomly I have seen speeds up around 80MB/s for short periods. There seems to be no pattern to this and I am not aware of making any changes that might be significant. These higher speeds have only appeared for short periods and at the time I wasn't paying much attention and so can make no useful comment on their mysterious appearance.

When I run USBtreeviewer (A graphical front end for the MS USBView) I can see that it lists 4 USB 3 ports on the Intel USB 3 extensible host controller (Ports 5 - 😎 so I am fairly confident that I have a working USB 3 controller in there, it is just that it appears not to be connected to the 4 USB ports on the rear of my Z220.

As an experiment I went round every USB port on the PC with a mouse just to ID each port and sure enough each port I plugged into was a USB 2 port. 

The hard drives I'm using identify in USBtreeviewer as being USB 3 capable and were sold as USB 3 drives. 

When I look in Win 10 device manager I can see the USB 3 extensible host controller and it claims it is working correctly and the drivers it is running are dated within the last 2 months.

USB 2 is working perfectly fine on the USB 3 ports so it seems likely that they are correctly connected internally etc.

As you can imagine I'm a bit confused with this and so would be grateful for any thoughts or suggestions, at the minute I haven't upgraded any drivers on the basis that everything looks pretty current so the machine is probably running the drivers that Win 10 has chosen to install. 

[Gaspedalo]

Hi Caoroach!

Have you been able to resolve this issue? We have 7 Z220 workstations in the office and everyone of them has the same problem with usb3 devices.

[dommi81]

I've also this issue with my Z220 CMT. First i thougt i fried the controller somehow by messing around with my Arduino. It recocnise my USB 3.0 HDD as an USB 2.0 (indicator LED) If i'm not the only one with that issue i can imagine that the problem occured at the last Windows 10 Update. Can anyone confirm this?

[caorach]

Sorry not to reply but I've been away for a while.

I don't have a perfect answer but...

Firstly I did all the firmware/chipset type updates that were available for the computer and that seemed to help a little bit but for the most part I still wasn't seeing my USB3 disks as anything but USB2.

What I then discovered was that if I restarted the computer the disks them mounted as USB3.

So, it looks to me like when I turn the computer on either the motherboard or the disks come up too quickly, or too slowly, and so somehow they don't get a USB3 driver associated with them. Doing a reboot solves this problem as the devices are already powered up and so the USB3 drivers end up associated with USB3 capable devices. 

I know that isn't a complete explanation, and that it has some gaps in the logic, but it is as close as I can get. As a result the only advice I can give is to turn your machines on, let them start, and then reboot them before you actually use them.

[caorach]

I don't think it was related to the most recent MS updates as I've been seeing the problem for nearly 2 years now. However, in your case if you didn't see the problem until you did the MS update then my money says that a driver update will put you back in a working state. I'd guess the MS update might have overwritten the HP specific driver for your computer. 

So, worth a try downloading all the drivers and chipset/firmware stuff from the HP support site.

[dommi81]

Thanks for the quick help! Installing the chipset driver sp72180 did the job!

http://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp72001-72500/sp72180.exe

[dommi81]

It's annoying. After installing the mentioinined driver a restart is required and everything works as it should. But after a further restart the driver were replaced again. I'd already change the "device Instalation Setings" to "No", but it didn't help. Any further ideas?

[DGroves]

plugging in a usb 2 mouse in a usb 3 port will downgrade the usb 3 port to usb 2 speeds this is normal behaviour

try plugging in a usb 3 device 3 device to the usb 3 ports and retry the test,

you will now see the ports are able to use usb 3 speeds

[dommi81]

No, it doesn't. The driver is replaced by every reboot. It's not possible to use USB 3.0 speeds after that.

[DGroves]

actually yes it does, the usb 3.0 spec allows it to down shift speeds to usb 2.0 when a 2.0 device is attached

what usb 3.0 device are you trying to connect?

the z220 uses the Intel USB 3.­0 eXtensible Host Controller Driver,..... which version depends on the OS and chipset

since the z220 uses the Intel 7 series  C216 chipset you need this driver for win 7

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/21129/USB-3-0-Driver-Intel-USB-3-0-eXtensible-Host-Control...

(if you have win 10 read below, and try install/setup under compatability mode)

Intel has not developed drivers for Intel® 7 Series Chipset Family to work with Windows 10 as per public use and there are no plans to do so. Since we no longer make motherboards the board manufacturers and computer makers are responsible to provide their users with drivers for the specific operating systems.

For Intel® 7 Series Chipset and Intel® 8 Series Chipsets we only made drivers for Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1.

The only recommendation we can give you is to contact your motherboard manufacturer (if using a custom built system) or your computer maker (if using a branded computer) to confirm if they have drivers for Windows 10.