| Sysop: | Amessyroom |
|---|---|
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| Calls: | 583 |
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| Messages: | 111,067 |
Steve Hayes <hayesstw@telkomsa.net> wrote:
My Windows XP computer has gradually been losing its connection with
USB drives and the printer, and now seems to have lost contact
altogether.
Other USB devices, like mouse and keyboard work OK.
For a while rebooting would make it possible to communicate with USB
drives, and would cause stuck printer pages to print, but now on
rebooting it shows the printer as offline, and even if I switch it to
online, it does not print.
Any suggestions?
What does Disk Management say about the USB drives and what does
Device Manager (use 'Action -> Scan for hardware changes' and 'View ->
Show hidden devices') say about the USB drives and the (USB?) printer
(look at the 'Universal Serial Bus controllers' tree and the 'Disk
Drives' and 'Printer queues' trees)?
As to general USB troubleshooting, look at Uwe Sieber's USB
utilities at <www.uwe-sieber.de>.
When responding, please crosspost to alt.windows7.general. That's of
course not an XP group, but several people there still use XP or also
use XP.
On 9 Aug 2025 17:07:52 GMT, Frank Slootweg <this@ddress.is.invalid>
wrote:
Steve Hayes <hayesstw@telkomsa.net> wrote:
My Windows XP computer has gradually been losing its connection with
USB drives and the printer, and now seems to have lost contact
altogether.
Other USB devices, like mouse and keyboard work OK.
For a while rebooting would make it possible to communicate with USB
drives, and would cause stuck printer pages to print, but now on
rebooting it shows the printer as offline, and even if I switch it to
online, it does not print.
Any suggestions?
What does Disk Management say about the USB drives and what does
Device Manager (use 'Action -> Scan for hardware changes' and 'View ->
Show hidden devices') say about the USB drives and the (USB?) printer
(look at the 'Universal Serial Bus controllers' tree and the 'Disk
Drives' and 'Printer queues' trees)?
As to general USB troubleshooting, look at Uwe Sieber's USB
utilities at <www.uwe-sieber.de>.
Thanks very much for the advice.
I fear it may be a hardware problem, as when I booted Linux it too
could not find any of the USN drives.
When responding, please crosspost to alt.windows7.general. That's of
course not an XP group, but several people there still use XP or also
use XP.
Thanks, I've done so.
On Fri, 8/15/2025 4:50 AM, Steve Hayes wrote:
On 9 Aug 2025 17:07:52 GMT, Frank Slootweg <this@ddress.is.invalid>
wrote:
Steve Hayes <hayesstw@telkomsa.net> wrote:
My Windows XP computer has gradually been losing its connection with
USB drives and the printer, and now seems to have lost contact
altogether.
Other USB devices, like mouse and keyboard work OK.
For a while rebooting would make it possible to communicate with USB
drives, and would cause stuck printer pages to print, but now on
rebooting it shows the printer as offline, and even if I switch it to
online, it does not print.
Any suggestions?
As to general USB troubleshooting, look at Uwe Sieber's USB
utilities at <www.uwe-sieber.de>.
Thanks very much for the advice.
I fear it may be a hardware problem, as when I booted Linux it too
could not find any of the USN drives.
USB drives, can be operated from bus power, or from a separate power source.
Bus power is limited, and a lack of bus power causes some USB hard drives
to fail to appear when plugged in. A USB power meter, in series with
the USB connector at the host, will show whether power is present
for any period of time. A Polyfuse can open on the motherboard and
remove power from the port.
A 2.5" hard drive, some spec sheets don't show the spinup current,
but the current is on the order of 1000mA to 1100mA or so. When sitting
on the USB2 bus then, that's a wee bit of an overload. The Polyfuse
may be set at 1100mA on a "stack-of-two" with black plastic tabs.
The USB3 ports, with their 900mA rating, the shared fuse on those
is over 2 amps. Not all PCs have a USB3 port and the more-generous fuse.
USB drives, can be operated from bus power, or from a separate power source. Bus power is limited, and a lack of bus power causes some USB hard drives
to fail to appear when plugged in. A USB power meter, in series with
the USB connector at the host, will show whether power is present
for any period of time. A Polyfuse can open on the motherboard and
remove power from the port.
USB sticks, also draw bus power, but some of the slower bus standard USB sticks should work even when bus power is weak. My oldest USB stick is
a 1GB one, and that is unlikely to draw a lot of power.
The power class declaration on a USB item, is unlikely to be exactly
equal to the actual power draw. For example, a device rated at "98mA",
that is a fake rating, intended to be "short of the 100mA value". The device might draw 5mA, for some types of USB items. There have been cases, where
a 5V @ 500mA device (Alcatel Frog Modem), a power measurement showed
it was drawing 530mA. That's OK, as the Polyfuse is set to higher than that. Only a laptop with a silicon fuse, would have trouble with an Alcatel
Frog Modem. A desktop should be fine. That device gets special mention, because a few people did have fuse-related outages with it. Other
people were fine.
A 2.5" hard drive, some spec sheets don't show the spinup current,
but the current is on the order of 1000mA to 1100mA or so. When sitting
on the USB2 bus then, that's a wee bit of an overload. The Polyfuse
may be set at 1100mA on a "stack-of-two" with black plastic tabs.
The USB3 ports, with their 900mA rating, the shared fuse on those
is over 2 amps. Not all PCs have a USB3 port and the more-generous fuse.
In any case, it's not really a good idea, to occupy absolutely all USB
ports on the back of the computer, with USB hard drives (spinning kind).
My Seasonic supply, the label only offers "5VSB @ 2.5 amps", and
that is enough to keep five drives spinning, but it can only guarantee
that two drives spin up when power is applied. Using one or two
drives, would be as much as I would want to plug in. While at one
time, the USB ports ran off the more generous +5V rail, the ports
today run off +5VSB, and there is no jumper option to change that.
The +5VSB is a weak rail, for operating a lot of toys.
I have had problems with bus-powered USB devices that are powered by a
USB hub rather than by the computer.
The general advice with the Raspberry Pi (so not Win 7!) is that
bus-powered spinning hard disks should be powered by a USB hub with its
own power-supply rather than from the Pi itself. This worked find for
the Pi 3, but when I got a Pi 4, I found that it failed to boot (not
even any output on HDMI so no diagnostic message) if the powered hub had power. If the hub was unpowered, the Pi booted but (as expected) failed
to see the external drive. If I booted the Pi and then turned on the USB hub, I could manually mount the drive.
Some people suggested that there was a conflict between the Pi's power through the USB port and the external power to the hub. I made up a USB cable with the +5V line cut. This made no difference to the booting
problem. It did still allow the drive to communicate as long as the
power to the hub was off at boot time and only later turned on.
I had to resort to a powered caddy and no powered USB hub. That works flawlessly.
So powered USB devices can be a pain.
I have had PCs that wouldn't boot if a USB memory stick was plugged in.
I can't remember whether it was any memory stick in any port, or just
certain sticks, or certain ports. It would have been, I'm pretty sure,
either Windows 7 or XP (USB under Windows 9x was pretty flaky anyway). I >haven't had that problem with this W10-64 machine, but possibly only
because I've never tried booting it with a stick plugged in so far.
On Sat, 16 Aug 2025 16:24:40 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver"
<G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:
I have had PCs that wouldn't boot if a USB memory stick was plugged in.
I have sometimes had the problem if it not booting in those
circumstances. But not always. It only happened about 1 in 10 times.
The USB had drive has its own power supply, and it now sees neither
that nor any flash drives, nor the printer.
It still sees they moust and the keyboard (otherwise I wouldn't be
able to type this).
On Sat, 16 Aug 2025 16:24:40 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver"
<G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:
I have had PCs that wouldn't boot if a USB memory stick was plugged in.
I can't remember whether it was any memory stick in any port, or just
certain sticks, or certain ports. It would have been, I'm pretty sure,
either Windows 7 or XP (USB under Windows 9x was pretty flaky anyway). I
haven't had that problem with this W10-64 machine, but possibly only
because I've never tried booting it with a stick plugged in so far.
I have sometimes had the problem if it not booting in those
circumstances. But not always. It only happened about 1 in 10 times.
The USB had drive has its own power supply, and it now sees neither
that nor any flash drives, nor the printer.
It still sees the mouse and the keyboard (otherwise I wouldn't be
able to type this).
On Sat, 16 Aug 2025 16:24:40 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver"
<G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:
I have had PCs that wouldn't boot if a USB memory stick was plugged in.
I can't remember whether it was any memory stick in any port, or just
certain sticks, or certain ports. It would have been, I'm pretty sure,
either Windows 7 or XP (USB under Windows 9x was pretty flaky anyway). I
haven't had that problem with this W10-64 machine, but possibly only
because I've never tried booting it with a stick plugged in so far.
I have sometimes had the problem if it not booting in those
circumstances. But not always. It only happened about 1 in 10 times.
The USB had drive has its own power supply, and it now sees neither
that nor any flash drives, nor the printer.
It still sees they moust and the keyboard (otherwise I wouldn't be
able to type this).