Hotplugging up a particular creek

Hi

This is a desktop related question but I figured it belonged more in Windows OS and Software than Desktop Hardware. I'm running Windows XP SP3 fully updated and a little while ago my hotplugging capability stopped working. If I disconnected my portable hard drive for example, I wouldn't hear the disconnection sound and the drive would remain in My Computer, disconnect hardware and device manager. No malfunction detected or anything. When its plugged back in, no connection sound and I cannot access the drive. The problem is intermittent, sometimes it works fine other times it plays up. If I have all the devices connected when booting up the computer they all work normally. I formatted to try and solve the problem but it has returned. One comment, I cannot use the Logitech mouse driver because of this problem, the driver shows up as cannot be started and I have no mouse unless I override the Logitech driver with the standard HID driver.

Any ideas?

Grand Admiral

 

1) Ensure that the Plug and Play service is running
2) Try different USB ports

 

Plug and play is running, I tried different ports with the mouse trying to get its driver to work and that didn't help.

Grand Admiral

 

Why do you need the driver for a Logitech? They usually have full functionality without the drivers (even in Linux).

Do other devices work?

 

Yeah, but I installed it anyway and it reacted the worst to whats happening, it wont run at all. Everything works normally, its only when you plug in another device or unplug devices. Its not plug and play as such which is malfunctioning, its only changing devices when the computer is on.

Grand Admiral

 

Some additional information: Safely remove hardware is being very slow when trying to eject a device and usually fails. At the moment it has vanished from my taskbar. Also in device manager, uninstalling the USB controller (as part of troubleshooting) takes ages and usually locks up and I have to end task.

Grand Admiral

 

If you Google XP SP3 and USB, you'll find that SP3 borked a lot of people's USB functionality. I don't have much more help to offer beyond suggesting that you install XP SP2.

 

How'd it do that? Not that I don't believe you - I do - I'm just too lazy right now to go google it.

 

Another interesting fact to note is that SP3 was supposed to fix quite a few problems with USB to begin with. SP3 contents here: http://labnol.blogspot.com/2005/05/windows-xp-sp3-service-pack-3.html

USB issues:
http://www.computing.net/answers/windows-xp/usb-failure-after-xp-sp3-upgrade/170379.html
http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=3311579&SiteID=17
http://www.engadget.com/2008/04/15/windows-xp-sp3-release-just-around-the-bend/

For the last one, search the comments for 'USB'.

A related issue, but only for specific hardware:
http://forums.hexus.net/operating-s...40991-xp-sp3-usb-mice-quite-show-stopper.html

 

You've come to the same conclusion I have, because slow and still failing ejection of disks is happening on my SP3 laptop as well, but not on my mother's old bomb SP2. Looks like my AMD was trying to tell me something when it wouldn't run SP3 (Due to an issue with OEM Windows and the Intel power management driver being enabled by installing SP3). I think I'll just roll back and install all the updates removed by SP3.

Thanks Bog

Grand Admiral