HEADS-UP!Windows 10 USB drivers for Intel USB 3.0 chipsets totally broken :mad:

undertaker2k8

[H]ard|Gawd
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Jul 25, 2012
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Windows 10 USB drivers for Intel USB 3.0 chipsets are totally broken and only allow USB 2.0 speeds. I've tested this on three machines that were upgraded from 7/8 to 10 pro with the same behavior.
In the interim, please use the drivers here: http://www.win-raid.com/t834f25-USB-Drivers-original-and-modded-9.html
This is really sloppy work by both MS and Intel, dropping proper support for USB 3.0 in their latest OS/chipsets (thank god for the hacked drivers or we'll be using USB 2.0 speeds on those shiny new win 10 machines).
Posting this under OS again as this is where it rightly belongs.
 
Standard motherboard "USB 3" connectors* have USB 3.x pins on one side and USB 2.0 on the other. If a USB 3.x driver is not installed, you're only going to have a working USB 2.0 portion on the connector.

I don't think anyone dropped support for USB 3.0. If there's a problem with recognition after an upgrade, and standard troubleshooting such as removing the device and any previously installed USB drivers, then re-scanning, and trying to grab the update from the MS server on the device properties if that fails, it's just a problem recognizing the device. I'm no Windows 10 fan, but you're being a bit hyperbolic there. It's very possible that a device driver will need to be installed on a new OS, and that's nothing new.

* non type-c
 
Nope, sorry to say you're wrong here, and I wish I was being hyperbolic. The standard xHCI USB 3.0 Intel Controller Driver provided by the base Win 10 OS only connects at USB 2.0 speeds even when devices are recognized as USB 3.0. The issue is that there is no other official certified driver that fixes this without using the Win 7 driver from Intel by disabling driver signature on boot. A pretty obtuse workaround to get something as basic as USB 3.0 working you'd agree? And this is the standard Intel USB 3.0 chipset we are talking about here not some obscure chip from Asmedia or Etron.

Look here: http://plugable.com/2012/12/01/windows-8-and-intel-usb-3-0-host-controllers, same story with Win 10 all over again.
 
Your first link explained the problem well enough to understand. The yellow flag on the device indicates the driver isn't installed. The hacked driver is available in order to get rid of that yellow flag. Without a USB 3.0 driver installed, the ports will only work at USB 2.0 speed since that's the only part of the port which is active without a USB 3.0 driver.

If you are upgrading from Windows 7 you'll need to uninstall the XHCI USB 3.0 drivers. Then follow the usual troubleshooting steps for loading the MS driver. You may need to delete the device then re-recognize it and/or use the device properties to check if MS has it online. If things have really been screwed up, it can be slightly more difficult to repair it.

I'm not sure why people make these things so difficult. There are plenty of Intel Windows 8.x systems with working USB 3.x ports, and working USB 3.x ports under 10 doesn't seem to be a general problem either (it worked fine on my Intel based laptop when I tested Windows 10). The basic functionality of the generic MS driver isn't the problem, it's failure to do basic troubleshooting correctly.
 
I am not sure what I could have missed: tried out every comination of bios usb settings,clean reinstalled intel inf files, deleted and reinstalled the standard ms drivers multiple times and nothing worked except the hacked driver. I also validated this on three separate machines.And btw I am an experienced sys admin ....so I stand by my findings that the standard usb 3.0 drivers in win 10 are useless, unless you enjoy running your usb 3.0 devices at 2.0 rates.
 
His claim seemed kinda weird.

i did a google search for "windows 10 usb 3.0 slow speeds" and changed my filter for results within the last month and the only result on the front page that matches what the OP said is

https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=259055.0

But that was from a Windows 10 upgrade as well. You'd think after 3 weeks after an OS roll out and multiple months of technical previews that if this was a problem there would be multiple pages people having the same problem.

I dunno, perhaps my google-fu is weak.

Do as pxc says and troubleshoot your drivers correctly, or better yet, do a clean install on win 10 on one of those machines you upgraded.

edit: seems like you some TS-ing. But I have plugged USB 3.0 thumb drives and have not noticed a decrease in speeds (If I recall correctly I was getting 50-70MB/s read speeds).
 
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Because it's not a problem with 10, it's actually is a issue that has popped up on some systems since Windows 7.

It's been a long while since I dealt with it, but the error is because windows is detecting errors in the transfer of data. If it sees more than three it automatically drops the hub down to 2.0 speeds and keeps it there until you reinstall the device or install a new driver.

If it keeps happening, look for a bios update, make sure xHCI is enabled in the bios, and if it's through a hub try it without it, or look to see if there's bios updates for it. Hard to find, but they do exist for some hubs with VIA chipsets.

edit: And run a scandisk on the device if it's a drive.
 
i have a different vendor usb but windows 10 loaded the drivers automatically and there working great here. Sounds like your a little quick to bash windows 10 imo
 
Because it's not a problem with 10, it's actually is a issue that has popped up on some systems since Windows 7.

It's been a long while since I dealt with it, but the error is because windows is detecting errors in the transfer of data. If it sees more than three it automatically drops the hub down to 2.0 speeds and keeps it there until you reinstall the device or install a new driver.

If it keeps happening, look for a bios update, make sure xHCI is enabled in the bios, and if it's through a hub try it without it, or look to see if there's bios updates for it. Hard to find, but they do exist for some hubs with VIA chipsets.

edit: And run a scandisk on the device if it's a drive.
Assuming that is the case, it should only drop to usb 2 for the device which encountered errors, not across every usb 3 port in the system? I independently tested three usb 3.0 drives including a brand new sandisk cruzer fit so the device with error slowing down argument does not hold up in this case.
 
Assuming that is the case, it should only drop to usb 2 for the device which encountered errors, not across every usb 3 port in the system? I independently tested three usb 3.0 drives including a brand new sandisk cruzer fit so the device with error slowing down argument does not hold up in this case.

And most systems only have one usb 3.0 root hub, so it has no choice but to every one to the same speed, unlike most systems nowadays which can assign a 2.0 hub to every other port so a problem won't affect every port.

https://social.technet.microsoft.co...indows-8-usb-30-problems?forum=w8itproinstall

http://plugable.com/2012/12/01/windows-8-and-intel-usb-3-0-host-controllers

https://superuser.com/questions/719...ports-on-windows-7-with-an-intel-usb-3-0-xhci

There are some links confirming what I was talking about. I had the problem with Windows 7, some had it in Windows 8 and you are seeing it in 10. It's a hard problem to fix, it took me a couple of months to figure it out but it's not because 10 is broken.
 
To OP, are you inserting the USB3.0 device quickly enough? I just bought a USB3.0 flash drive, Mushkin Ventura Plus, and at first I was only getting 40MB/s reading and writing and thought I had a bad drive. I tried it on all my USB3 ports and saw the same thing. Then I connected my USB3.0 hard drive (max 80MB/s read) and was getting the correct speed. I looked up the issue and found that if you insert the device too slowly, it will detect only as USB2 and give you USB2 speeds only. I have Win10 on H87 mobo and USB3 speeds are working fine.
 


Was able to get full speed with just the windows USB 3.0 driver. Started slow for the first 10seconds or so but then sped up.
 
Undertaker, did you try installing the driver using compatibility mode? Right click on the driver installer file and select the compatibility option. The compatiblity mode has allowed me to use some very old software on my Win10 machines completely reliably with full functionality.
 
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