Hello
I'm using a PC with Intel Z97 chipset, Windows 7 x64 and a mouse connected to USB port.
Windows 7 does not have its native USB 3.0 drivers (xHCI) so if I do not install any additional drivers the mouse works of course with native Windows USB 2.0 drivers and one of the two EHCI controllers built in Z97 chipset. The mouse works fine in this configuration.
But in order to have USB 3.0 functionality (SuperSpeed transfer rate) I need to use xHCI controller so I installed Intel USB 3.0 xHCI driver kit downloaded from Intel website.
The Intel drivers install without problems and everything seems to work fine - except the mouse.
The mouse gets unstable: most of the time it works normally but sometimes (you never know when) it gets freezed for a moment: the mouse pointer displayed on the screen stops moving when you move the mouse and it does not respond to clicks too. After a second or two the mouse pointer jumps to the location on the screen where it should be placed and the mouse comes back to normal functioning in most cases. But there are also cases when the mouse does not come back to normal but hangs at all instead - then the only way to make it work is to unplug it from the USB port and plug it in again.
I have made sure that this is definetely not a hardware problem with the mouse device - as it works fine on another computer and it also works fine on the affected computer if there is no xHCI driver installed.
The problem with the mouse occurs as soon as you install Intel USB 3.0 xHCI driver. When you uninstall the driver the problem disappears.
But uninstalling the xHCI driver is not a solution for me because I do want to have USB 3.0 functionality available.
I tried various versions of Intel USB 3.0 xHCI driver including the latest: 4.0.4.51. The symptoms described occur with all of them.
I thought the workaround might be to connect some USB ports to xHCI controller (thus offering USB 3.0 capability on these ports) and leave other USB ports to EHCI controllers (2.0) - including the port to which the mouse is plugged in. This way the mouse would work with EHCI controller and USB 3.0 capability would be available too - on other ports.
But unfortunately I can't see any way to configure which USB port should be handled by which USB controller. As soon as I install Intel USB 3.0 xHCI driver kit any device being plugged into any USB port gets always routed to xHCI controller - never to EHCI controller. EHCI controllers get totally cut off.
According to Z97 chipset specification it is up to software configuration to decide which USB port is handled by which controller (xHCI vs. EHCI1 + EHCI2). This is available by setting dedicated internal PCH registers (see http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/chipsets/9-series-chipset-pch-datasheet.html, chapters 16.1.36 .- 37 page 586).
Unfortunately there are no options in my BIOS/UEFI to set it up.
So do you know a way to configure it ? Maybe the Intel xHCI Switch Driver (which seems to be resposible for connecting USB ports to USB controllers as I understand)
has some parameters which might be set for that purpose ?
thanks for reading this
regards