Occasionally when turning on my HP 3110 printer a balloon appears from the system tray saying “This device can perform faster if you connect it to a USB 2.0 port. Click here for available ports”. Shortly after the computer produces a blue screen of death with the message “DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL. Technical information: STOP 0×000000D1 (0×00000008, 0×00000002, 0×00000000, 0xF8983509). usbuhci.sys – Address 0xF8983509 base at F8980000”. Reinstalling the printer does not resolve the problem, so at the moment all I can do is turn on the printer and hope this message does not appear. This is obviously not a long-term or satisfactory solution. How can I fix this problem for good?

The message which appears saying that the device can perform faster on a USB 2.0 port means that your printer is capable of communicating with your computer using USB 2.0. This is the second version of USB which supports fast data transfer of up to 480 megabits per second. The speed of USB 2.0 is a marked improvement over USB 1.1 which could only transfer at 12 megabits per second. However, it seems that you have the printer plugged into a USB 1.1 port on the computer which only supports the slower speed, so Windows is trying to be helpful by suggesting that you may wish to connect the printer to a USB 2.0 port so that you can obtain the faster speed. Although the benefits of connecting a printer to a USB 2.0 would not appear to be great given the small volume of data moved between the computer and printer, if you connect storage to a USB 2.0 port versus USB 1.1 then you will see significant performance improvements especially when transferring large files. This is where the performance dividend comes into practice.

Returning to your question, it is quite strange for this message to only appear intermittently, as it should appear consistently when connecting your printer to the computer. This coupled with the fact that the blue screen also appears following this message indicates that something is not quite right. In the first instance, try connecting your printer to a completely different USB port on the computer to check whether that resolves the problem. If the problem does not continue in the different USB port then it is possible the original port is faulty. To confirm, try connecting a different device to the port (e.g. USB flash drive) to check whether the problem also occurs with that device. If so, there is a bad USB port on the computer. Since the USB ports are linked directly to the motherboard there is not much you can do to fix the port, short of replacing the motherboard in the computer. My suggestion would be to simply not use that port on the computer. If you need additional USB ports your best option would be to connect a powered USB hub to an existing port on the computer to provide the additional ports required.

In the event that the problem continues when your printer is connected to a different USB port on the computer, try connecting the printer to every USB port on the computer, each time checking whether the problem continues. This is because several USB ports may be on the one USB controller (i.e. a circuit which controls the ports). If that controller is faulty then it could be affecting multiple USB ports. If you find that the problem does occur when connecting the printer to a group of physically close USB ports (e.g. on the same row on the back of the computer) but does not occur when using a completely separate group of ports (e.g. on the front of the computer) then you might have a faulty USB controller. In this case it could also be affecting other devices connected to the USB ports also on that controller, so you may wish to check those devices are working correctly. If a large number of ports are affected then you may wish to obtain a replacement motherboard, as this could be a more substantial problem.

However, should the problem occur on all the USB ports then it seems more likely to be a problem with Windows communicating with the printer or a conflict with other USB devices. In the first instance, unplug all other USB devices from your computer to see whether that fixes the problem. If so, plug-in all the devices again. This will obviously cause the printer problem to reoccur. Then, unplug each device one at a time until the problem stops, at which point you know the device causing the conflict and can take further action. However, if you find that another device is not causing the problem through a conflict, your next step should be to visit the HP website and download the latest drivers for your printer. It appears that the latest drivers (at the time of writing) are from August 2006 (version 7.0.1). Even if you bought your printer after this date it is still worthwhile to download and install these drivers, as the drivers included in the box with your printer may be older. Once you have installed the devices, check whether the problem persists.

If you have reached this point but the problem still continues, please contact me again for further advice.