USB problem - HELP!!!

I recently downgraded to WinXP tablet 2005 edition from Vista Business on my Lenovo X61 Tablet PC.

Everything went relatively smoothly, until I plug in my IBM external USB 2.0 supermulti optical drive. It was working fine before in Vista, however now when I try to use it in WinXP I would get this error message:

"The USB Mass Storage Device has exceeded the power limits..."

This does not make any sense whatsoever, because firstly it worked before in vista, and secondly I used the external drive to INSTALL winXP, so it was working before logging into the windows platform. So I put in the XP installation CD again and restarted the computer, and well... I was able to boot from the XP CD in the external drive.

Then I went into device manager and checked the POWER requirement and availability of my USB ports, and the total power available is stated as 500mA while my external drive only requires 96mA.

I have no other USB devices connected either.

Please help, I need to install Office on this lappy I've got a report and 2 essays due this weekX_X

Thanks in advance.

Hmmm, well what about reinstalling Vista to at least finish your reports? What External drive model is it? It may not be compatible with XPTablet Have you tried getting a driver for it?

Maximum power specifications would usually be described for the USB ports in the motherboard drivers. AFAIK the power requirements for the actual device are obtained using PnP, so it's unlikely to be a driver for the drive itself that's at fault.

Another thing to remember is that notebooks and tablets often change their power specifications when you are running on battery power, so could that be the difference?

Assuming not, then it sounds to me like the drivers for the tablet are different comparing Vista and XP, or not properly installed. For instance, have you installed the power management drivers? It looks to me like they are the same for Vista and XP, but if you haven't installed them it may be the difference. Get the drivers here.

You may also want the associated power manager software, get it here. This one DOES differ between Vista and XP but it's just a tool, not the driver, so it shouldn't make any difference.

Meantime, if that doesn't work or you don't have time and you really need to get your work finished in a hurry you could bypass Microsoft and install Sun OpenOffice.

Thanks for the replies, but no luck so far:(

To clarify a few things:

This external drive came with the Thinkpad and worked before in Vista and during WinXP installation, so it must be compatible with my Tablet.

Also, I've always been running on AC power when using this drive.

And I installed the power management drivers before even connecting the drive for the first time.

Now, something really weird happens:

I would place the WinXP installation CD into the drive, let windows detect the bootable CD during startup, however during the "Press any key to boot from CD" screen I did not press any keys, so windows loads from HD as normal. After loading into windows, I would be able to explore the WinXP installation CD and the drive seems to work normally. THEN when I place in ANY other CD, the external drive would start to spin again and give me the dreaded "The USB Mass Storage Device has exceeded the power limits..." message :frusty:

I'm so completely lost and stumped.

In the meantime I'll take lynx's advice and go Openoffice, but I can't even switch back to vista since I formatted my recovery partition:angry:

Please help, a PC with an optical drive is a like a whore without her tits, it just doesn't work:(

Thanks for the replies, but no luck so far:(

To clarify a few things:

This external drive came with the Thinkpad and worked before in Vista and during WinXP installation, so it must be compatible with my Tablet.

Also, I've always been running on AC power when using this drive.

And I installed the power management drivers before even connecting the drive for the first time.

Now, something really weird happens:

I would place the WinXP installation CD into the drive, let windows detect the bootable CD during startup, however during the "Press any key to boot from CD" screen I did not press any keys, so windows loads from HD as normal. After loading into windows, I would be able to explore the WinXP installation CD and the drive seems to work normally. THEN when I place in ANY other CD, the external drive would start to spin again and give me the dreaded "The USB Mass Storage Device has exceeded the power limits..." message :frusty:

I'm so completely lost and stumped.

In the meantime I'll take lynx's advice and go Openoffice, but I can't even switch back to vista since I formatted my recovery partition:angry:

Please help, a PC with an optical drive is a like a whore without her tits, it just doesn't work:(

Maybe?