USB slower on Vista than Ubuntu

Question

My machine dual-boots Windows Vista and Ubuntu. It has an Intel motherboard (D102GGC2) and USB 2.0 ports.

While using Vista, I get 1.5 Mbps speed from the USB ports, which is the speed for USB 1.1. When I use Ubuntu, I get 15 Mbps to 20 Mbps.

What causes this difference, and how can I get the better speed in Vista?

Answer 1

According to wikipedia, USB 1.0 speed is 12 Mbit/s, while USB 2.0 speed is 480 Mbit/s.

Are you sure that the 1.5 MBps on Vista is not actually 1.5 MByte/s = 12 Mbit/s ?
The Vista speed would in that case be exactly at the limit of USB 1.

In that case also the Linux driver's speed is quite comparable to Vista, although faster. But that difference can be explained by other operating system parameters such as better memory buffer utilization etc.

Answer 2

install the chipset driver for your mainboard in Vista.

edit: i just looked up info at the Intel download center, there is no support for Vista, only XP.

Chipset driver for Intel Desktop Boards with the ATI Radeon* Xpress 200 chipset. The INF files inform the operating system how to properly configure the chipset for specific functionality, such as USB and core PCI.

did you run Windows update? there could be a generic Vista driver by Microsoft available.

Answer 3

Are you sure that the speed difference is from the driver? E.g. have you stopped the virus scan software and then tested the speed? Usually stopping virus scanning is not a good idea, but in case it is your stick and you just want to test the speed, then stop the scanning of file accesses and re-test. This should give you a speedup of about 2x. If not, then I agree, you should check for the chipset drivers. USB is not a separate driver, e.g. in my motherboard USB is inside the motherboard drivers.