Windows crashing

[Finlay]

I all,
I have a problem on my Windows Vista that began afetr the purchase of an external Hard Disk Freecom.
A few days afetr the purchase I disconnected it while it was writing and, since that moment, every time I connect and disconnect it, the PC go to freeze mode for 5 minutes.
The same thing happen even if the hard disk is disconnected: every time I start windows it go to freeze a little after the password, and every time I connect and disconnect a usb device.
I have looked for the solution everywhere, updated windows, unistalled and installed the hard disk from the device manager but I solved the problem only when I restored a recent backup.
Yesterday the Hard disk was writing a backup while Vista was installing the updates; at the end of the proceure windows restarted automatically and the problem began again!!!
The Pc go to freeze when it starts, every time I connect or disconnect the hard disk, an usb earphone that has always worked switch on but there is no audio and I don't know how many others usb devices will have problems.
Has anyone an idea to solve this problem before I throw out of the window Vista or the the hard disk?
Thank you

 

[Rob Williams]

Ugh, I can't believe Vista rebooted the PC during a write to a hard drive. That's one of the things that bothers me most about Windows. I had the same thing happen once when I was in the middle of a game, and it was frustrating.

The issue you're experiencing is a little bizarre. I could understand if the drive itself was problematic after all that, but it shouldn't start a chain-reaction and affect all of the other USB devices. I don't think it's a Vista issue, although it could be. Because the USB audio doesn't work, it leads me to believe it could be a bandwidth issue. But the issue is made even more frustrating by the fact that it worked before.

Did you try plugging the USB audio into another USB port to see if that helped the problem at all? Did you uninstall the USB ports from your Device Manager? One idea is to see if you can re-install your chipset drivers, which could possibly help. One other thing you might want to try is updating your motherboard's BIOS, as this might be a known issue, and a newer BIOS version may rid it.

Geez, I wish I had a more specific solution. This is a strange one.

 

[2Tired2Tango]

The issue you're experiencing is a little bizarre. I could understand if the drive itself was problematic after all that, but it shouldn't start a chain-reaction and affect all of the other USB devices.

Rob, this sounds like a USB error check problem... The drive is producing mass errors (probably because of corrupted data) and it's affecting everything else... Your suggestions are all excellent. It sounds like it could be drivers, but I would also suggest formatting that external drive, as a precaution against the problem coming back.

 

[Kougar]

Finlay, you might try going to your device manager and uninstalling all the entries under your USB menu. Make sure all the USB devices are unplugged, and lastly reboot. Give the OS a few minutes to reinstall the USB drivers before you try plugging anything in to test it.

 

[Tharic-Nar]

Performing a backup whilst updating the OS is not really a good idea, you can induce a read/write error on a critical file - in that the backup utility is reading whilst the update is writing, leading to a corrupt file. Yes, there are supposed to be plenty of software and hardware tricks that are meant to prevent this, but it can still happen. I would agree with all of the above suggestions, format the external drive, update chipset drivers, uninstall and reinstall usb drivers. Second to last resort is to run System repair from the OS disc, this will recover the OS whilst keeping most of your system preferences, applications, etc, safe, but you may need to reinstall service packs and patches again.

Do you have any USB hubs connected, like that with a printer or monitor, or a multi memory card reader? I ask because with a clients computer, they had a similar problem in that devices would hang or not work at all because of a dodgy USB hub/card reader that was integrated within an Epson multi function printer. As long as the printer's USB cable was connected, no other devices would work, be it flash drives, external drives, other usb hubs, etc, and try as i might, i could never fix it via software. The only fix was to remove the printer cable, wait a minute and all other devices could be used without problem. As soon as the printer was plugged in again, everything else stopped working.

Also, it might be worth asking... PC overclocked at all? Over exerted memory with bad timings and instability can cause all sorts of bizarre problems... mainly data corruption...