for those with usb and usb power consumption issues

[Gavin Lewarne]

I haven't experienced any USB related problems myself on my SP3 but I have seen a number of unresolved threads where people are seeing higher than usual USB power consumption in their battery reports or other strange behaviours with USB connectivity.

I am one of those overly fussy people and always make sure every possible driver on my systems are the latest available.

In doing so on my SP3 I discovered that the Microsoft firmware-packs supplied driver for the MicroSD card reader (a realtek usb3.0 unit) is actually really, really old. Like, before 8.1 Update 1 old....

You can manually update it to the latest official reltek supplied driver (right from their website) to one released in December 2014.

This *may* alleviate some of the USB problems people are having if the (very) old drivers supplied by the firmware packs is somehow buggy or not using the USB bus correctly.

You can download the driver from here:

http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads...=25&Level=4&Conn=3&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false

The package you need to download is the very first (top) one in the list. Simply download it, extract the archive. Then open device manager, select the USB section, highlight the card reader and right click > update driver software, and point it to the location of the extracted archive. You may need to reboot (I would anyway)

Hopefully this might help some people

 

[GreyFox7]

Good tip, not bad for a stoopid fubar doofus

 

[Gavin Lewarne]

Good tip, not bad for a stoopid fubar doofus

I totally want that as my forum tag or something

 

[ChiGGz]

I have a self powered USB 3.0 HUB. It's from a company called HooToo, but I'm not sure how reputable their products are. Is there any chance of the self powered HUB inadvertently sending power to the SP3 USB port? I assume the power can only flow out from the SP3 USB port and not in.

 

[sharpuser]

... Is there any chance of the self powered HUB inadvertently sending power to the SP3 USB port? I assume the power can only flow out from the SP3 USB port and not in.

Very doubtful, even on cheap devices. Diodes keep that from happening. If that were the case, we would hear about USB components failing from burnout all the time.

 

[ChiGGz]

Very doubtful, even on cheap devices. Diodes keep that from happening. If that were the case, we would hear about USB components failing from burnout all the time.

Makes sense. Thanks!