USB Drives Freezing Windows 7 Computer

[hlewton]

Occasionally my computer will freeze up and I have no mouse or keyboard when plugging in some USB external drives. This does not happen consistently, nor can I repeat it if I want to. When it does happen the only choice I have to recover is to hold in the power button until the machine shuts down and then restart it. This happens at different times. By that I mean the most recent time was immediately after starting up the computer but it has happened after the computer has been on for some time before I plugged in the USB devises. Any ideas what could be causing this and any suggestions on how to eliminate it from happening again?

Thanks.

[HansV]

Unplug USB devices if necessary.
Click the Start button.
Type device manager.
Click on Device Manager (it's probably the first item in the list of search results).
In Device Manager, scroll down the list until you see Universal Serial Bus controllers, then expand it.

S239.png

If there is an exclamation mark in front of any of the items, there is a problem with it.
Right-click the item and select Uninstall from the context menu.
Close Device Manager.
Restart Windows. The driver will automatically be reinstalled.

[hlewton]

Thanks Hans. I had already checked the devise manager for any problems and it shows nothing. In the action center alert icon in the systray it said I needed to install an USB driver and that is why I checked the devise manager a while ago. Even at that time the devise manager showed no problems but I called the guy who builds my computers and he said since the devise manager showed no problems there was no action required. He talked me through getting rid of the notice in the action center. To be honest I have no idea how long that action center alert was there because I never really paid any attention to it until a week ago when what I just described happened. The problem with my machine freezing up has been an on going problem for a long time now but it doesn't happen very often, just often enough that it is annoying.

[Leif]

Anything showing in your Event Viewer?

(Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Event Viewer...)

x.jpg

[hlewton]

I believe there is but I have no idea what it means. I will attach a screen shot of it.

Thanks

Event1.jpg

[Leif]

Wait until the freeze happens again, and then check the latest events.

[hlewton]

Wait until the freeze happens again, and then check the latest events.

OK, I will but did I get a screen shot of the correct section of the Event Viewer in the one I posted or should I be looking at some other section? I only ask because that screen shot, if correct, did cover the time that the latest freeze up occurred. Are you looking for consistency the next time or did this screen shot not tell us anything? Just curious. Thanks.

[Leif]

I'm not sure what to look for! I would expect anything applicable and serious to be in the System folder

What does the fourth entry marked critical say when you expand it? Googling "event id 41" suggests you may have a over-heating or PSU problem.

Event ID 6008 is unexpectedly logged to the System event log after you shut down and restart your computer
and
Windows Kernel event ID 41 error "The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first" in Windows 8, Windows Server 2012, Windows 7, or Windows Server 2008 R2 suggests (confirms) your pc shutdown unexpectedly, but as is the way, once the pc freezes, it can't log why.

I can't suggest anything specific myself, but it may be worth using some software to monitor your hardware - e.g. show temperatures and voltages - and see if you can see anything amiss.

[hlewton]

I'm not sure what to look for! I would expect anything applicable and serious to be in the System folder

What does the fourth entry marked critical say when you expand it? Googling "event id 41" suggests you may have a over-heating or PSU problem.

Event ID 6008 is unexpectedly logged to the System event log after you shut down and restart your computer
and
Windows Kernel event ID 41 error "The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first" in Windows 8, Windows Server 2012, Windows 7, or Windows Server 2008 R2 suggests (confirms) your pc shutdown unexpectedly, but as is the way, once the pc freezes, it can't log why.

I can't suggest anything specific myself, but it may be worth using some software to monitor your hardware - e.g. show temperatures and voltages - and see if you can see anything amiss.

This is what the event id 41 shows when expanded: "The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly."

After your suggestion yesterday of looking at the Event Viewer I spent a considerable time searching the NET using all of those other event ids as well as the #41 and could not come up with anything I could identify with my problem. I read a rather lengthy article about a fellow's computer freezing up and no matter what he did or monitored or changed he never did find any solution and his did the freezing on a rather consistent daily or even more often basis. He too thought he had a heat problem and even after cleaning the heat sink and straightening out a couple chip pins, which he didn't know if he had just bent them while removing the processor chip or if they had been bent for some time, his problem still existed. He, however, was running a very graphic intensive video game and even swapped out video cards trying to correct the problem. I never play any games on my computers and the only time my problem occurs is occasionally when trying to connect external hard drives to USB ports. I could find nothing on the NET to help me with that.

I'll keep looking and see if I can find anything that will help me monitor the hardware to see if anything becomes obvious but I believe because of the rarity of my problem it may be very difficult to find. Thanks for your help and suggestion.

[Leif]

Eileen's Lounge • View topic - Update: Speccy v1.25 released may be worth a try!

[hlewton]

Thank you.

[hlewton]

Well I don’t usually work with degrees centigrade nor can I find a precise temperature that my CPU should be running at but from all appearances I believe I don’t have a temperature problem. I have been monitoring my system with the recommended Speccy program for about 24 hours now and the highest average temperature I have seen is from the video card and it is 36 degrees C. The CPU runs and an average of 33 to 34 degrees C and all the other components that Speccy monitors run 23 to 26 degrees C range including the mother board and the external hard drives when they are connected. As I am plugging in the external hard drives I did see the CPU temperature spike to 40 degrees C but only stayed there for less than 5 seconds before returning to the 33 to 34 degree range. As I said, from all I can find on the WEB it does not appear to me to be a temperature problem but if anyone thinks otherwise please let me know because I sure am not familiar with any of this temperature stuff.

Thanks

[HansV]

Those temperatures are perfectly normal. You can switch from °C to °F in the View | Options dialog.

[hlewton]

Thanks Hans for the info and knowing the temps are normal. I made that change so now I no longer have to do the conversions. Glad to know that option was there.

[hlewton]

OK it has been quite some time since I posted on this subject and that was intentional because I did not want to "jinx" what I think I found as the solution. I have no idea why this works and if anyone knows I'd appreciate a reply but here is what I did and have not had a freeze up since my last post which was about 3 months ago. I still attach as many USB drives as I ever did but I no longer use the front ports on my computer. I have added cables to USB switches attached to the back of my computer and so far that has eliminated the freezing. Any ides why this would work? It was really getting to be a consistent problem when I was using the front USB ports.

[HansV]

That's hard to say... I frankly don't know.

[hlewton]

I have done a few searches on the WEB looking for answers but didn't really find anything helpful. Most of the posts seemed to deal with front ports that did not work at all but that isn't the case with mine. They do work but when used along with the back ones they often tend to cause that freeze. Somewhere along the lines I do recall someone that I was on the phone with years ago, who was trying to solve some problem I had at the time, insisting I use the USB port on the back of the computer and not those on the front but at the time I never questioned him as to why. Wish now I had.

[PJ_in_FL]

Speculating that your computer (desktop?) has the front USB ports' driver circuits separate from the circuits driving the rear USB ports, it sounds like a hardware defect, but not something you could correct unless you can debug live electronics and remove and replace parts like surface mount or through-hole capacitors, etc.

The act of plugging in a device in a USB port causes a power surge on the USB power and ground pins. This surge could either cause cross-talk to a near-by circuit or cause the voltage to briefly sag locally. For instance, the power supply for the USB port, +5 volts, powers other circuit components. If the voltage level falls below it's lower limits for even thousandths of a second, another device on that same power circuit could have a fault occur. Either way, this could affect another circuit in a way that the computer could not recover from.

A common hardware failure is for electrolytic capacitors (tall, upright devices with two pins out the bottom, usually blue or brown in color) to fail. It's possible to spot a failed capacitor by a careful inspection of the top of the device, which will be bulged outward slightly. This is a common failure in the power supplies in LCD displays. I have a couple of displays that I'm going to try to fix by replacing these caps as soon as I find my round TUIT.

As the doctor said when told by the patient "It hurts when I do this", "Then don't do that".

[hlewton]

Thanks PJ_in_FL for the reply but as you mentioned I won't be trying to fix that if it is the problem I have. I do have a desktop but I'm not sure about separate circuits for front and back USB ports. I do have separate ones, I would assume, for USB 2 & USB 3 ports though. In any case as long as I shy away from the front ports on a normal basis I don't seem to have a problem.