updated 14 December 2012
Melbourne Australia
Updated 13 December 2012
Quick back story,
When windows 7 was released in July 2009, many people were pleasantly surprised to discover it ran better than its predecessor Windows Vista. Love or hate Windows Vista, the new version of Windows made the most of the current PC hardware. Skip forward a few months to April 2010, and the release of the iPad1. What many discovered was that the USB ports on many PC’s would not charge the iPad, or if it did would only offer a trickle feed (100mA), though the ports can supply 1500mA, and what the iPad1, and many of todays, smartphones and tablets require.
A fix was offered to power up the USB ports safely in 2010, for Vista and Windows 7.
Many like me that have done a clean install of Windows 8, may not remember this flaw, and driver a simple software patch, tweaks the USB port to offer a little over 1A (between 1000mA and 1500mA).
Obviously PC’s newer than 2010 (running motherboards built after this) will not likely have the issue.
A bit more about the driver is here on Gigabyte On/Off Charge Site – http://goo.gl/OdGJ9
The actual driver is here http://goo.gl/bQulv
The driver requires nothing more than an install and restart.
Note: For those that installed the earlier update of this this newer version increased the power again a few %. Due again to the increased power demands on the ports, and power needed by newer devices.
Enjoy
Mr Internet
Melbourne Australia
tech-news.tv
Updated 14 January 2011
This proved to be a popular blog when I ran it 8 months ago. It addressed a new driver from motherboard manufacturer gigabyte, that allowed you to charge you iPad on your PC (not something possible before). This updated free driver, also allows you to charge other devices that worked before even faster and this update adds a few updates to all of that, and it makes that pesky ‘this device is not charging nag screen go away.
By pure coincidence, I went to reinstall this driver and found an update released today ok I am a bit psychic (& psychotic) , but the driver solves some other problems as well such as clearing your USB trash, caused when you remove USB devices all the time. Here is the link, it goes to Chinese first but should offer to translate to your native language depending on your browser. You are looking for on/off charger driver but here it is
Installation Update
I note on download and installation it is a bit different than the original driver .
it took 1 minute to download, extract and install.
- The driver is 1.61 mb (very small takes a few seconds to download)
- It is a compressed exe file so you will need to extract it to a folder on your desktop etc.
- When extracted, it creates 1 folder called ‘on/off charge’ and creates 2 files inside setup.exe and setup.iss
- Run the set-up, reboot your pc and you are done
How to Tell it is Working
- When you installed the driver it would have asked you to re-boot your PC if properly installed.
- It is very discreet there are no whistles, or bells.
- If you have an iPad you would notice on the iPad it would have said it was not charging before now it is charging
- If you start to re-run the set-up.exe it will ask you if you want to modify or reinstall the software.
- It is a driver so there is no anti-virus software issues
- Anything more technical speak to gigabyte, I am just a blogger not the manufacturer
- If in a corporate environment consider speaking to your system administrator, he might enjoy using this across the company it is pretty sweet.
- Tell your freinds
- Enjoy
Motherboard manufacturer Gigabyte are Gods.
They have introduced a tweakdown-loadable , that allows iPads to now be charged from PC’s and laptops, via the USB port . An issue many were not aware they had and plague others that were aware of this.
I will use gigabyte motherboards for ever more because of this, it is a BIG deal.
On the site is a list of the motherboards it works for but mine is older and it worked just fine.
The additional upside is it charges iPhones and iPods faster as well.
Update
Judging by the coverage of this page Gigabyte was getting slammed so moved the link of the driver (nice). I have updated it.Worth noting that though this driver is specfic to gigabyte, I have heard from dozens of folks it works on motherboards other than gigabyte.
Happy for you to share the story please be nice and give a shout out to news-knut/mrinternet when you do. Mac bloggers (you know who you are)
