Web Talk

Recently, Microsoft released an interesting hotfix for Windows 7 and Windows 2008 able to increase the maximum transfer size/speed/rate on USB devices (such as external USB storage, USB dongle etc). The hotfix is able to makes wonder on your computer! In fact it will increase “the maximum transfer size from 64 kilobytes (KB) to 2 megabytes (MB) in the Usbstor.sys driver.” To tell you the truth I do not understand why Microsoft didn’t give more credit to this patch on its website. At any rate, let’s see where to download this hotfix and how to install it on your Windows 7. As said above, it will dramatically increase the transfer speed of your USB storage devices once you plug them on your Windows.

1. Go to this  Microsoft Support page.
2. Click “Hotfix Download Available View and request hotfix downloads” located at the beginning of the page.
3. Click the “I accept” button.
4. Select the hotfix for your operating system and type your email address in the email field. (it is mandatory)
5. The download link will be sent to your email account. Download and install the patch. This is the first part of the whole process as it won’t be sufficient to install the patch on your computer for the hack to work. You will also have to apply some change to your Windows registry.
6. After installing the patch, click Start on your computer desktop.
7. Click Run…
8. Type regedit and click OK.
9. Locate the following registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\ Control\ usbstor
10. Right click the usbstor key, click New – Key. Name the new key as: VVVVPPPP
11. Click OK to create the key.
12. Now, click the usbstor folder
13. On the right pane, right-click the “default” key.
14. Click Modify…
15. In the Value data field, type MaximumTransferLength and hit the OK button.
16. Still on the usbstor folder, on the right pane, right-click any empty space and from the menu select  New – DWORD.
17. Name the new DWORD as MaximumTransferLength and press OK to create the new key.
18. Now, double-click the MaximumTransferLength key and assign ita value between 65535 (64KB) and 2097120 (2MB).
19. Exit regedit and restart your PC for the changes to take effect. Now your USB maximum speed rate should have been changed.
20. Please note that some computer hardware might not support such has. In fact, as stated on the Microsoft webpage: “For some USB storage devices, performance can be improved if the maximum transfer size is increased from the default 64 KB. This update supports this change when the hardware vendor provides a device information file (INF) to set this value for the USB storage devices.”