Lady Wu wrote:Thanks James and Adrian.
I had already checked the Device Manager, which claimed everything was working properly. I tried updating the drivers too but the system said everything was up-to-date already.
A dummy question since I've never had to deal with PC cards before... are they all the same size?
PS: Now that I think about it... that time when my laptop just shut itself down may have to do with the USB drawing too much power from it, perhaps? Do these adapters come with external power?
As far as PC Cards go, most of the USB adapter ones I've seen are of one type, what's called Type II. If your laptop has a Type II slot (about 5 mm thick) then any Type II PC card should work. However, depending on your laptop and how old it is, you may have an Express Card slot instead, and those do come in different sizes. There are also some older and newer versions of PC Cards that are different in size, but like I said most of the ones with USB ports seem to be the same (Type II). How old is your laptop?
As far as the power issue goes, in terms of wattage they are unlikely to have contributed much more than a little bit of usage - the only thing I might worry about is the laptop's 5V amperage rail on its power supply. USB devices draw from the 5V rail and even if the wattage being supplied is enough, exceeding the limits of the amperage rail is just as bad. So I guess it's possible that was the problem, but it doesn't seem very likely to me. Maybe James can shed more illumination on that?
In any case, yes, a number of the PC Cards with USB ports have connections for an AC-to-DC adapter although not all of them actually come with the adapter. Syba makes a 5-port USB PC Card that does come with an adapter, and it retails for $20.99 at Newegg. I've never used one though - I'm unfamiliar with the brand names on those, so I would do some comparison shopping and read some reviews first.
Starscream wrote:My 2 year old PC is on the verge of collapse soon too. The beep during the bios bootup takes minutes when it should be heard within seconds from power on. This has been on and off for the past half year. Then today, my pc hanged when I was surfing the net halfway. When that happened to my old pc years back, it died of motherboard burn out. So this time, I am backing up my data just in case if this is the last time it is going to boot up again.

It might not be the motherboard - could also be an ailing power supply or CPU. Are you good with computers? If you are you could disconnect power-intensive devices or even go through a step-by-step process of disconnecting and reconnecting each piece of hardware, to see what the issue is. But if you can decrease the power load on the PSU and get a post (the beep sound during boot) then it's probably the PSU. If decreasing the load doesn't solve things, could be the motherboard or CPU.
Adrian