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I installed a USB 2.0 PCI expansion card in my Gigabyte GA-7ZX motherboard which only has USB 1.1 ports but I can't get it to work unless I boot the pc with a flash drive inserted before hand. Even then, once the drive is removed it renders the expansion ports inoperable again. The only clue about it I have is that when my computer is booting up a message flashes on the screen about an unknown header type at some particular PCI slot which only appears if the expansion card is installed. I know nothing about how this stuff works really. Can anyone help?

I am running PClinuxOS 2008 Gnome Edition. However I have had this same problem with every distro I've tried (Fedora 8, Ubuntu Gutsy & Hardy, Mandriva 2008 RC, Dream Linux, etc...).

This is the output of lspci:

'00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8363/8365 [KT133/KM133] (rev 03)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8363/8365 [KT133/KM133 AGP]
00:07.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 [Apollo Super South] (rev 22)
00:07.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 10)
00:07.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 10)
00:07.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 10)
00:07.4 SMBus: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 [Apollo Super ACPI] (rev 30)
00:0a.0 Ethernet controller: D-Link System Inc RTL8139 Ethernet (rev 10)
00:0e.0 Multimedia audio controller: Ensoniq ES1371 [AudioPCI-97] (rev 07)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV20DCC [Quadro DCC] (rev a3)

The output of lsusb is:

Bus 001 Device 002: ID 03f0:6004 Hewlett-Packard DeskJet 5550
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000

Well, I wasn't able to reproduce my past experience with booting when the flash drive is already installed so I'm not sure what's up with that, but here is the output when I insert the flash drive after booting:

sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 43 00 00 00
sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] 252928 512-byte hardware sectors (129 MB)
sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 43 00 00 00
sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Assuming drive cache: write through
sda: sda1
sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI removable disk
sd 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 0

I would assume this looks normal.

HardDrake shows the following info.

The controller that works:

Identification
Vendor: ‎VIA Technologies Inc.
Description: ‎VT82C586B USB
Media class: ‎SERIAL_USB

Connection
Bus: ‎PCI
Bus PCI #: ‎0
PCI device #: ‎7
PCI function #: ‎3
Vendor ID: ‎0x1106
Device ID: ‎0x3038
Sub vendor ID: ‎0x0925
Sub device ID: ‎0x1234

Misc
Module: ‎uhci-hcd

The controller that does not work:

Identification
Vendor: ‎Linux 2.6.22.15.tex1 uhci_hcd
Description: ‎UHCI Host Controller
Media class: ‎(Defined at Interface level)

Connection
Bus: ‎USB
Bus PCI #: ‎2
PCI device #: ‎1
Vendor ID: ‎0x0000
Device ID: ‎0x0000
Sub vendor ID: ‎0x0000
Sub device ID: ‎0x0000

Misc
Module: ‎unknown

Also, when Linux starts to boot it says it is disabling PCI device "Unknown header type 38".

I think this may not be a Linux issue at all. It's starting to look like maybe a bad card or BIOS conflict.

I've decided to resolve the issue by upgrading my mainboard. Thanks for the input though.