USB settings in BIOS

It helps if you tell us what system you have.

The "USB Emulation" setting controls BIOS support for USB devices. BIOS can "emulate" a standard keyboard, mouse, floppy, etc if you have a USB version plugged in. Old software (DOS) that doesn't understand USB can use the emulated devices.

The "USB Controller" setting controls the USB hardware itself. Turning this off will completely disable USB, since the devices themselves will be turned off. If you leave this on, but turn emulation off, the OS is responsible for providing USB support. If you leave them both on, the OS will provide USB support if it can, otherwise BIOS will "emulate" those devices so your OS can see them.

Note: even if you turn these items off, they will be on while the BIOS splash screen is displayed. That's because systems with USB keyboards must have USB support, or you'd never be able to get into BIOS setup.

Duhhh, thank you for the reply. Very easy to understand :-)  I'm just trying to seed up boot up time. It takes about 30-40 seconds for the machine to display WinXP Logon screen. I have 10 USP devices some connected directly into USB 2.0 PCI adapters, so to USB HUB. It takes several seconds for the computer to communicate and confirm each device. Is there any way to speed up the process without removing any USB devices.

I have Dimension 8200, 1.9 GHz, 1GB RAM, 2 HDDs (160 GB and 80 GB), External USB WD 120 GB HD.

Thx

 

    

No, there isn't an easy way to speed up the detection of USB devices. Windows only enumerates one device at a time, partly due to a limitation in the USB design.

I know what you mean about the slow boot times. I avoid this by using hibernate rather than shutdown. I only shutdown/reboot once every couple of weeks. Every other time I hibernate, and the system comes back much faster from hibernate.