USB "safely remove hardware" causes my USB modem to reset

[Guest]

This is very odd - whenever I use "safely remove hardware" to disconnect my
USB pen drive, my broadband modem resets. I'm sure it didn't used to do
this, in fact it seems to have only been happening for a week or so - maybe
something in a recent update has changed its behaviour ?
The really strange thing is that I don't even have to actually remove any
piece of hardware - right now the only thing connected which appears on the
removable list is the modem, and just clicking on the icon to see the list
causes the modem to reset !

Any thoughts ?

 

[Thorsten Matzner]

This is very odd - whenever I use "safely remove hardware" to disconnect my
USB pen drive, my broadband modem resets. I'm sure it didn't used to do
this, in fact it seems to have only been happening for a week or so - maybe
something in a recent update has changed its behaviour ?

Start here: "General USB troubleshooting in Windows XP"
(http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=310575).

 

[Guest]

Start here: "General USB troubleshooting in Windows XP"
(http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=310575).

Thanks for that, I've had a look there.

There was no mention of the symptoms I'm seeing (a USB device resetting
itself just by clicking the "safely remove hardware" icon, not even selecting
an item to remove) but it did help me to check everything like power usage,
device drivers etc.

Unfortunately my PC seems to be set up fine - I have 8 internal USB ports,
all supporting 500ma, and no device is using more than that. None of the
device manager entries show a problem, my BIOS is the most up-to-date one
available for this motherboard, and my problem device isn't anything unusual
(it's a Speedtouch 330 ADSL modem)

 

[R. McCarty]

Even with a USB-2 channel, connecting a ADSL modem is going
to consume a hefty portion of the channel's bandwidth. If your PC
has an Ethernet card/NIC - why not connect the ADSL modem
with an Ethernet cable and forget the USB connection ?

Did you check the USB Controller that serves the channel for the
modem and see how much bandwidth is being used. Double-Click
each Controller under the USB Device Manager category. It's under
the Advanced Tab for each Host Controller.

 

[Guest]

Even with a USB-2 channel, connecting a ADSL modem is going
to consume a hefty portion of the channel's bandwidth. If your PC
has an Ethernet card/NIC - why not connect the ADSL modem
with an Ethernet cable and forget the USB connection ?

Its a USB only modem - there is no choice. I plan on getting a router /
modem some time, but just haven't gotten round to it.

Did you check the USB Controller that serves the channel for the
modem and see how much bandwidth is being used. Double-Click
each Controller under the USB Device Manager category. It's under
the Advanced Tab for each Host Controller.

I did - its 23%, which I figure is no big deal.
I don't know what the bandwidth limit is for USB-2, but as I've only got
512k ADSL I'm pretty sure I'm not going to be anywhere near the limit.

 

[R. McCarty]

Thanks for the follow-up post. 23% is OK. Just mentioned that as
some Composite devices can easily take up 50% or more of the
bandwidth.

I wonder if this crash condition doesn't have something to do with
Windows not allowing an active Networking device to be removed ?
How does the ADSL modem appear in Networking Connections,
as just a simple LAC (Local Area Connection) ? or as a Gateway
device.

 

[Guest]

I wonder if this crash condition doesn't have something to do with
Windows not allowing an active Networking device to be removed ?
How does the ADSL modem appear in Networking Connections,
as just a simple LAC (Local Area Connection) ? or as a Gateway
device.

Well, its not exactly a crash - the machine continues working, and the modem
resets, redials and immediately reconnects.
The modem appears as a dial-up connection in the Network Connections control
panel. Also, regarding it not being allowed to be removed, I'm not removing
it, I just click on the safely remove hardware icon. In fact I only noticed
this problem because I was using a USB pen drive (on a different hub - all my
USB hubs appear to have 2 connections) and when I removed that (using the
safely remove hardware icon) my ADSL connection dropped. It took me a while
to realise that this was the cause, because I didn't have automatic reconnect
setup at that time, and so I only realised when I tried to access something
like email or the web, and it asked to reconnect. Now I have auto-reconnect
on, I can see the reset and redial occur immediately.