[jonnymay]

Hey all,

My computer is a four or five year old Dell laptop running XP, SP2.

As it's so old, it has the old slower USB.

To fix this, I have a cardbus to bring it up to USB 2.

My laptop is also running a wireless internet card.

The crux of the problem is, when the wireless card is plugged in with the USB 2 card with my ipod into it I get a power surge.

I tried to remedy this problem by getting a wire, which goes from an old USB port to the USB 2 card to give it extra power. However, this has done nothing.

If you could give me some advice to remedy this problem, it would be much appreciated.

Thanks very much,
Jonny May

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Hi, Welcome to GTG

I'm not very familiar with iPods (yes there is still one person in the universe who doesn't own one), so you will have to tell me - does the iPod use it's own power source when connected to the laptop (an AC adapter for example)?

Also, have you tried getting the iPod to work with the wireless card removed?

[Samm]

Hi, Welcome to GTG

I'm not very familiar with iPods (yes there is still one person in the universe who doesn't own one), so you will have to tell me - does the iPod use it's own power source when connected to the laptop (an AC adapter for example)?

Also, have you tried getting the iPod to work with the wireless card removed?

[jonnymay]

Hey Samm,

No the ipod does not have its own power supply.

Up until now, I have been removing my wireless card to use my ipod and it works perfectly.

However, I was hoping to get an external hard drive for me laptop. I am worried that it will not have enough power. Do you think it would work if it had an external power supply?

Thanks for your help.

[Samm]

Yeah, if you buy a drive with an external power supply, it should work fine. The USB ports can only provide a max of 500mA to USB devices & this 500mA is shared between the 2 ports when 2 devices are connected. Laptops in particular, especially Dells for some reason, seem to suffer problems with this more so than desktop PCs.

The error message you were getting indicates that one device (the iPod in this case I assume) is attempting to draw more power than is available from the port. If the iPod has a power adapter socket on it, then this might allow you to use it successfully.

[jonnymay]

Thanks for very much for your help.

[Samm]

You're welcome. Let us know if you have any more problems with it.

Samm