Fixing The USB Power Surge Error Message

Posted Aug 25, 2008 | by Jason Faulkner  

One problem I run into on systems which have USB devices plugged into them when resuming from [S3] standby is an error message which reads:

Power Surge on Hub Port: A USB Device has exceeded the power limits of its hub port.

This message is followed by a dialog box which forces you to reset the USB device’s connection. Of course, this can get somewhat annoying as everytime I resume from standby I am greeted with this error.

The fix is to force the USB hub to work in USB 1.1 mode versus 2.0 mode. This Microsoft KB article explains how to make the change.

Of course, when going from USB 2.0 to 1.1 you will lose transfer speed, but in most cases you probably will not be able to tell the difference. If you get this error message and you absolutely need to keep the device in USB 2.0 mode, set your system’s BIOS to use S1 standby (instead of S3) as this will not completely power down the device and should work normally upon resuming.

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2 Responses to “Fixing The USB Power Surge Error Message”

  1. Jikki says:

    Won’t notice a difference my ass! It’s 12mbps compared to 480! The one thing you’ll REALLY notice with is with usb drives. Doing anything with them. It’s atrocious to think that anyone would recommend this as a solution…

  2. Jennie says:

    Ey, I have the same problem in my laptop but when I reset USB device connection it is still giving the same error message.. basically, the usb port wont really work at all… what shall I do?

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