flash drive pulled early = Blue Screen Of Death!

B

burnie.nowax

Hey all...

I have a Toshiba Tecra M2V-S310 laptop PC with Windows XP. A week ago I
inserted a friend's flash drive into my USB port to drag something from
his drive. My laptop choked a bit, slowed down and I got an error
sound, so I pulled the drive out immediately. A few days later, I
started getting the random Blue Screen Of Death with the message
IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL, at which point I am forced to restart. I see an
Unknown Device in my Device Manager, and after doing some reading up
online about this problem I see that it is sometimes caused by
something to do with not fully installing new hardware, I assume this
has a lot to do with the problem. As a temporary fix I always uninstall
the Unknown Device every time the Blue Screen Of Death forces me to
restart, which buys me an extra 45 minutes or so of laptop time, but
every time I am eventually but inevitably forced to restart, I got back
to the Device Manager and lo and behold the Unknown Device has
returned, along with a prompt on my desktop to Install New Hardware.

I am currently out of town and since all my work is computer-related,
this is completely screwing my world up right now. Does anyone have any
kind of input or advice? Unfortunately, since I'm out of town I am not
able to plug in the flash drive that supposedly started this problem to
uninstall it properly, so that's not an option. I posted this query
several days ago, and someone suggested I delete all the icons in my
Universal Serial Bus section of Device Manager, so that the necessary
ones would automatically reinstall themselves and the erroneous one
wouldn't. Only problem is, everything reinstalled - the valid icons and
the erroneous one as well. Back to square one. Someone else suggested
that my USB port might be fried, and that the only recourse is to get a
new one. If that's the case I'm willing and ready to get a new one, but
I'd like to exhaust all other options before I go there, obviously. A
million thanks in advance for any advice anyone can give me. I'm really
between a rock and a hard place right now.
 
D

DandyDon

Below is a Copy/Paste from the news group on USB problems and diagnostics. I
hope it helps.


(PeteCresswell) said:
Seems like problems with USB are a bread-and-butter Subject line in this
group.

I've had my share too.

Is there some basic flaw in MS's implementation?


Pete:
These USB non-recognition problems have been vexing all of us for some time
now. We've become increasingly convinced that the relatively large number of
problems in this area involving the non-recognition of USB devices that
we've all been experiencing is an indication that there is something
seriously flawed with respect to either the USB 2.0 specifications, possibly
involving quality control issues affecting the manufacturer of these USB
devices as well as supporting components such as motherboards and other
USB-related components. Then too, we've become increasingly suspicious of
the XP OS as it relates to its recognition of and interaction with these USB
2.0 devices.

We have encountered far too many unexplained problems affecting
detection/recognition of these devices and their erratic functioning not to
believe that something is seriously amiss in this area.

We continually encounter situations where a USB 2.0 device - generally
involving a flash drive or USB external hard drive, will work perfectly fine
in one machine and not in another. And, in far too many cases, we're unable
to determine why this is so since we're unable to detect any
hardware/software problem in the balking machine that would cause this
non-recognition effect.

We've put together a more-or-less checklist for troubleshooting these
problems that (hopefully) may be of some value to users encountering this
type of problem...

1. Access Disk Management and see if the USB device is listed. If so, and
there's no drive letter assigned, see if you can assign a drive letter to
the device.
2. If the USB device is listed in Disk Management with an assigned drive
letter, right-click on its listing and select Explore from the submenu.
Hopefully, Windows Explorer will open and the device will be listed.
3. Connect the USB device *directly* to a USB port on the computer, not via
a USB hub. Try different USB ports should your computer have multiple ports.
4. Avoid using a USB extension cable.
5. Try connecting a USB device (that does not contain an auxiliary power
supply) to a USB port both before and after the boot operation.
6. Try alternate powering on/off methods. If the USB device contains its own
power supply, try booting up with its power on, then try powering on only
*after* the system has booted to a Desktop.
7. Try a different USB cable.
8. In the USB controllers section of Device Manager, uninstall all the USB
controllers listed and reboot.
9. If the device in question is a HDD which you installed in a USB
enclosure, jumper the USB external HDD as Master (or Single if the HDD is a
Western Digital disk). A number of users have reported that jumper
configuration corrected their non-recognition problem. In my own experience
it didn't seem to matter how a USB external HDD was jumpered. But it may be
worth a try.
10. If the device in question is a USB external HDD, first check out the HDD
with the hard drive manufacturer's diagnostic utility. If it checks out OK,
and you can remove the HDD from its enclosure (without voiding any
applicable warranty), do so and install the HDD as an internal HDD to
determine if there are problems with the drive.
11. If the USB device is connected to a USB 2.0 PCI card, try changing the
PCI slot to which it's currently connected to another one.
12. Access the website of the manufacturer of the USB device to determine if
there's any firmware update or info re the problem you're experiencing or
there's any possibility that the USB enclosure itself might be defective.
13. Determine from the manufacturer of your motherboard whether there's a
BIOS upgrade affecting USB device recognition.
Anna
 
M

Michael C

I am currently out of town and since all my work is computer-related,
this is completely screwing my world up right now. Does anyone have any
kind of input or advice? Unfortunately, since I'm out of town I am not
able to plug in the flash drive that supposedly started this problem to
uninstall it properly, so that's not an option. I posted this query
several days ago, and someone suggested I delete all the icons in my
Universal Serial Bus section of Device Manager, so that the necessary
ones would automatically reinstall themselves and the erroneous one
wouldn't. Only problem is, everything reinstalled - the valid icons and
the erroneous one as well. Back to square one. Someone else suggested
that my USB port might be fried, and that the only recourse is to get a
new one. If that's the case I'm willing and ready to get a new one, but
I'd like to exhaust all other options before I go there, obviously. A
million thanks in advance for any advice anyone can give me. I'm really
between a rock and a hard place right now.

Try starting in safe mode and deleting the device there. You might find
several entries for it and many entries for hardware that was previously
installed but now removed.

Michael
 
R

ronl3991

Hey all...

I have a Toshiba Tecra M2V-S310 laptop PC with Windows XP. A week ago I
inserted a friend's flash drive into my USB port to drag something from
his drive. My laptop choked a bit, slowed down and I got an error
sound, so I pulled the drive out immediately. A few days later, I
started getting the random Blue Screen Of Death with the message
IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL, at which point I am forced to restart. I see an
Unknown Device in my Device Manager, and after doing some reading up
online about this problem I see that it is sometimes caused by
something to do with not fully installing new hardware, I assume this
has a lot to do with the problem. As a temporary fix I always uninstall
the Unknown Device every time the Blue Screen Of Death forces me to
restart, which buys me an extra 45 minutes or so of laptop time, but
every time I am eventually but inevitably forced to restart, I got back
to the Device Manager and lo and behold the Unknown Device has
returned, along with a prompt on my desktop to Install New Hardware.

I am currently out of town and since all my work is computer-related,
this is completely screwing my world up right now. Does anyone have any
kind of input or advice? Unfortunately, since I'm out of town I am not
able to plug in the flash drive that supposedly started this problem to
uninstall it properly, so that's not an option. I posted this query
several days ago, and someone suggested I delete all the icons in my
Universal Serial Bus section of Device Manager, so that the necessary
ones would automatically reinstall themselves and the erroneous one
wouldn't. Only problem is, everything reinstalled - the valid icons and
the erroneous one as well. Back to square one. Someone else suggested
that my USB port might be fried, and that the only recourse is to get a
new one. If that's the case I'm willing and ready to get a new one, but
I'd like to exhaust all other options before I go there, obviously. A
million thanks in advance for any advice anyone can give me. I'm really
between a rock and a hard place right now.
 
R

ronl3991

Hey all...

I have a Toshiba Tecra M2V-S310 laptop PC with Windows XP. A week ago I
inserted a friend's flash drive into my USB port to drag something from
his drive. My laptop choked a bit, slowed down and I got an error
sound, so I pulled the drive out immediately. A few days later, I
started getting the random Blue Screen Of Death with the message
IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL, at which point I am forced to restart. I see an
Unknown Device in my Device Manager, and after doing some reading up
online about this problem I see that it is sometimes caused by
something to do with not fully installing new hardware, I assume this
has a lot to do with the problem. As a temporary fix I always uninstall
the Unknown Device every time the Blue Screen Of Death forces me to
restart, which buys me an extra 45 minutes or so of laptop time, but
every time I am eventually but inevitably forced to restart, I got back
to the Device Manager and lo and behold the Unknown Device has
returned, along with a prompt on my desktop to Install New Hardware.

I am currently out of town and since all my work is computer-related,
this is completely screwing my world up right now. Does anyone have any
kind of input or advice? Unfortunately, since I'm out of town I am not
able to plug in the flash drive that supposedly started this problem to
uninstall it properly, so that's not an option. I posted this query
several days ago, and someone suggested I delete all the icons in my
Universal Serial Bus section of Device Manager, so that the necessary
ones would automatically reinstall themselves and the erroneous one
wouldn't. Only problem is, everything reinstalled - the valid icons and
the erroneous one as well. Back to square one. Someone else suggested
that my USB port might be fried, and that the only recourse is to get a
new one. If that's the case I'm willing and ready to get a new one, but
I'd like to exhaust all other options before I go there, obviously. A
million thanks in advance for any advice anyone can give me. I'm really
between a rock and a hard place right now.

Bernie,
I don't think your USB port is fried. I have recently started
experiencing external USB HDD problems for no apparent reasons. I have
had an IDE HDD installed in an external enclosure which seemed to work
flawlessly for more than a year. After I started having problems, I
installed a different HDD in the enclosure and the system recognized
the new device the first time it was plgged in to a USB port. It too
hasn't worked since, but my external USB DVD plugged into the same port
works fine. I also removed the HDD from the enclosure and reinstalled
it in computer and it worked fine in the computer. I also ordered a
complete new USB 2.0 enclosure and experienced the exact same
performance. I am running Windows XP Pro SP2 and believe the problem to
be OS related. Unfortunately I have been unable to find a solution, but
I don't believe your "usb is fried".
Ronl
 

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