How do I Add USB ports?

In this Consumer Guide, Kai Chandler looks at how to add more USB ports.

These days, most PCs come with a couple of Universal Serial Bus or USB ports. There's more about these handy little sockets in our Guide.

The trouble is that two ports are unlikely to be sufficient for all those shiny new peripherals - printers, mice, keyboards, scanners and MP3 players all need their own socket.

This Guide looks at what's involved in adding more USB ports to your computer.

The simplest way is to buy a hub - a sort of adapter that plugs into one of your USB ports and provides more USB ports. You can stack two or more hubs together to give the required number of additional ports.

This example uses the low cost Belkin 4 port hub. It's small, light weight, and includes the connecting cable and its own power supply. It'll add another three ports to the computer's original two. It does, however, need Windows 95 OSR2, 98, 2000, ME or XP. Alternatively, Mac OS 8.1 or higher.

Here's what to do to install the hub.

• Check that the power switch on the side of the adapter is set to Self. The other setting for Hub which means that the adapter draws its power from the USB port. Belkin advise that this is not recommended for some peripherals such as scanners and modems so it's best to use the mains adapter if at all possible.
• Plug the mains adapter into a mains socket and connect the power cable to the hub.
• Find a free USB socket on your PC. You may temporarily need to unplug a peripheral.
• Connect the supplied USB cable to the free socket on the PC and plug the other end to the socket marked Root Port.
• A few things should happen now. The status and power lights on the hub should illuminate to show it's been connected up correctly. A message will appear on your computer screen to advise that a generic USB hub has been detected.
• Connect peripherals to the four free USB ports on the hub as required.

To check correct working of the USB hub, you can always take a look at Device Manager in Control Panel. To do this using Windows XP, select Control Panel from the Start menu. Click on the System icon and then the Hardware tab. Select the Device Manager. There is a section called Universal Serial Bus Controllers. Click on the + sign to expand this section and you should see an entry for the Generic USB hub that you've just installed. Double click on this and you should see a message 'This device is working properly'

It's as simple as that!

Kai Chandler reviews top tools for family friendly surfing at www.surfcontrols.com