USB External Drives crash computer; Computer works fine without

[DarkMatt]

Okay, I'm giving up and heading to a forum dedicated to fixing unexplainable problems. (I hope.)

Okay, where should I start? Back last January my computer has been crashing completely randomly, telling me that I'm getting MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTIONs and IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL. I lost my system restore backups because I moved too much stuff onto my external hard drive. (No seriously, I had a month's worth of backups when I checked, and when I went back to restore, they were gone. Words cannot explain my malcontent towards System Restore.)

Anyway, back on topic. Let's organize this timeline:

-January 30th-ish, my computer starts rebooting at the Windows XP loading screen. Booting into safe mode, then booting up normally, strangely fixes the problem.
-This worked for 2 days, afterwards...strange, things, started happening. Sometimes it froze during bios loadup, (the first screen) sometimes it will power on and then immediately power off.
-Back against the wall, I reinstalled XP. Computer needed it anyway. Problems still persisted, either crashing and rebooting during XP starting up (During the black screen with the XP logo and that cute little blue bar.) or randomly while XP's started up. I even did absolutely nothing at one point and it killed itself. I can conclude that I cannot do something that would bring forth this crash.

-And so begins the tests. I first tested my C:\ drive, no disk errors. I ran memtest86+, no immediate issues. (I only did 2 passes though. I was told once to do 5 but was that really necessary?) I scanned the problem USB drive twice and checked for disk errors, twice, the drive itself is fine. I updated my USB drivers, problems STILL persisted.

-However, the big kicker is--and I'm going to underline this because this is pretty important--is I don't experience these problems in safe mode. It boots fine in safe mode, I have 2 external hard drives, they both crash my computer if I plug in either of them, but they don't do a thing if I plug them in during safe mode. To say this is odd would be an understatement. I'm wondering if you can decipher what this means for me.

I'm at wit's end. I have tested the memory, the disks, scanned for viruses, it's all normal. I'm asking you, fine community, to tell me what I should try to fix.

I can currently think of two options:
-It's the power supply/how I have hooked up my cables. But I wonder if a faulty power supply can not cause problems during safe mode.
-It's the motherboard drivers or usb drivers. I have updated both, however I have not checked if my computer--from a blank slate--would run fine with drivers installed only to restore USB functionality. It's a mystery.

I have used BlueScreenViewer to get to the root of the system crashes, and have uploaded its report for your aid. The errors I have gotten are...quite varied, but hopefully can be put under one general category. If you want a sample before snagging, I've been getting a variety of MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION, UNEXPECTED_KERNEL_MODE_TRAP, KERNEL_MODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED, and IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL. Also, most recently, I just received a ATTEMPTED_WRITE_TO_READONLY_MEMORY.

If you need anything else, just give me a ring.

Thanks for your concern.

[goatape]

Regarding your problem i will first advise you to update all the drivers for your system with the latest one as it might be the problem with the corrupted driver. Another thing that i will suggest you is to disconnect all your hardware and keep only those hardware connected which are necessary to run system as this can be problem with the hardware which might be not showing the compatibility. So do as i said and let me know whether this is working for your issue or not.

[DarkMatt]

Thank you for your initial guess.

I have updated a lot of drivers, including USB drivers. I've lost track of what I have and have not updated and have done so much I just put down "all". If driver updating is the problem, I'm going to need a specific driver to try to update/downgrade/whatever. If you want a list of drivers I have, can I ask you to give me something that'll write a file listing all the drivers I have?

Also, it is worth noting that I actually had to install XP twice. The first time I had the USB drive plugged in but my computer couldn't recognize it. I put in the CD that has some mandatory updates for my motherboard and stuff, the moment XP detected the driver it crashed. Now I'm pretty sure there's no right way to interpret this, but it could be a clue.

Also, today I tried turning on my computer, it immediately shut back off. I tried turning it on again, it booted fine. I didn't had my usb drivers plugged in, it still did it. I hope I don't have to change my thread title to read "Nevermind. I'm having bigger issues." within a couple of days.

So it's starting to sound more and more like a power supply/motherboard physical issue. Makes sense, even though I don't know how to test and see if it is or isn't. However, it's hard to say "The power supply won't cause issues if you boot XP in Safe mode." so I'm not dead set on picking one of those two to be the culprit.

If you folks think I should check the power supply, can you tell me which part of it I should check and how I should go about checking it?

Also, I just jumped right in to a nearby tech support forum without reading the rules because I am getting very paranoid over this situation, sorry about that.

[Felix46]

There may be some problem with the USB cable that you are using to connect the hard drive to the computer and that is the reason that you are facing the problems like this. What you can do is just take another new cable and try to connect the hard drive with that cable. I hope that this time it will not show you the problem like this.

[DarkMatt]

There's a problem with the cable for two separate external hard drives? Both of them? They both failed at the same time?

Actually, I haven't went to another computer and tried booting it up with the external hard drives plugged in. (Bugger if I'm going to find another XP computer though. I'm behind in the OSs.) Unfortunately, both drives' hookups aren't exactly, "take usb cable plug into drive and then plug other end into computer." I think one is miniUSB to USB, but this is just more assuming.

[DarkMatt]

I apologize ahead of time if double posting is not allowed, but I have a status update.

I fell asleep with my computer turned on. Normally I turn it off but this time the action went right past me.

It's a good thing though. I might have had some programs running (firefox and maybe other things) but I basically did nothing at all to it.

It took it a while, but it crashed. Only once, after about 6-7 hours, a long time. It was MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION, caused by hal.dll, (with ntoskrnl.exe being highlighted as well in BlueScreenView.) and otherwise appears as if I had my usb drivers plugged in...but I didn't. It up and did this by itself.

I'm afraid it'll take some time before I can remove all the computer chips and bits that I can live without. So I'll write back when I get around to doing that.

If it's worth pointing out, I use a USB keyboard and have had a USB gamepad plugged in and functioning all the time.

[T.J.]

The error that you are facing is due to the hardware problems that could be either the processor, ram or motherboard, so you will need to contact your hardware vendor so that he can test and debug where the problem lies. Generally, a windows xp clean install would have fixed it but as you have already used this method and still it is not working so, I can bet that it is a definite problem with the hardware. The problem has been reported to the OS by the CPU in the form of an MCE (Machine Check Exception), so these would be hardware errors.

[DarkMatt]

Throwing my machine out to my hardware vendor, whoever that could be, and having to shell out money to get a definite fix for my problem, is a bit too much for me.

Are you sure there's no way I can at least find where the problem lies myself?

By which I mean, any way I myself can test the processor and the motherboard?

[Solomon]

• If either software or hardware can cause a particular trap, a debug is required to determine which is the cause. If you suspect a hardware problem, try the following hardware troubleshooting steps:
  
  1. Test the RAM in the computer by running the diagnostic software that is provided by the computer manufacturer. Replace any RAM that is reported as bad. Also, make sure that all the RAM in the computer is the same speed.
  2. Try removing or swapping out controllers, cards, or other peripherals.
  3. Try a different motherboard on the computer.
• If you are over clocking the speed of your processor, set it back to the speed at which it is designed to run.
• Check with the hardware vendor for any updated hardware drivers or BIOS updates, or both.

[DarkMatt]

Tested memory, it's fine. In the middle of getting someone to discombobulate my computer, so swapping computer bits is in progress. And I'm not luxurious enough to have a spare motherboard and processor, but I'm down with trying it in the event that option 1 and 2 has been exhausted.

Now for updates. I have gotten a long stream of consistent stop errors while trying to run XP normally. (And during bootup.) These have started up when I went, "Well, it'll be awhile before I can completely remove the sound card, guess I'll just reach over and unplug it for the time being." I may have gotten some other errors involving things like IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL or atapi(?).sys, but what my computer has been dumping is the following:

Bug Check String: MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION
Bug Check Code: 0x0000009c
Parameter 1: 0x00000001
Parameter 2: 0x8054e5f0
Parameter 3: 0xb6000000
Parameter 4: 0x00000181
Caused by driver:hal.dll
Caused by address: hal.dll+5bfb
File Description: Hardware Abstraction Layer DLL
Product Name: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System
Company: Microsoft Corporation
File Version: 5.1.2600.5512 (xpsp.080413-2111)
Processor: 32-bit
Computer Name: (Left blank.)
Full path: C:\WINDOWS\Minidump\Mini021011-13.dmp
Processors Count: 2
Major Version: 15
Minor Version: 2600
Dump file size: 94,208

(Also highlighted in the dump is ntoskrnl.exe+775c8. All but one of them also show that file in the stack, whatever that is. The other, which I don't remember how I replicated, substitues it for ntkrnlpa.exe+775f0.)

So is this explainable? Did cutting power to my sound card (And not taking it out of my computer outright.) mean anything? Also, it might just be me, but the crashes are now happening a lot more often.

Another update, I went through the wonderful adventures of msconfig and setting it to diagnostic startup. It was not fun trying to fix services, but this problem persisted even though I told Windows XP to DISREGARD ALL DEVICES AND SERVICES. (To my great dismay. Thank GOD I wrote every mandatory service that was automatic and manual down.) ...I'm pretty sure at this point it's definitely not software. Unless there's software that a world-breaking configuration program can't break in two.

Now here's a riddle, this computer works fine in safe mode, I am about to validate that claim by leaving it on while I sleep for hours. But, as stated before, I used msconfig to disable every device and driver, and it still crashed. I'm pretty sure by now it's definitely not software, but the question is how would a faulty piece of hardware run XP fine in "safe mode", but not in software-less "diagnostic startup" mode?

Computers are weird and scary.

[Hockson]

What is your computer configurations? Have you tried reinstalling the graphics drivers in your pc? As you have said that you can boot in safe mode then go into Safe mode then Device manager and then uninstall graphics drivers. Restart the computer and then check that - Add hardware wizard appears and returns you to normal mode or not.

[DarkMatt]

...I'll try that.

It'll be a while before I can get it to crash. Which is going to be painful, yano, having to operate with the fear of it going all down?

As for computer configurations, point me to something that'll generate a handy list of it and I'll post it to the thread.

Thanks to all of you for your continued support thus far.

[DarkMatt]

I can't seem to edit anymore so I have to double post again.

Disabling graphics drivers did not remedy the problem. Thankfully, it didn't take long.

It was worth a shot though.

[monsitj]

Are you facing the issue with the all the USB port? Try to connect the External Hard Drive to another Port preferably back port. It can be possible that your system is having the infection of virus which is not allowing the system to load then driver for External Hard drive and that is why you are getting the issue with the same. In my suggestion you should run an updated antivirus program with the latest Virus definition update and see to it that remove infection if found any.

[DarkMatt]

Okay, my brother just went in and disconnected the sound card. (Which I suspected was the problem.) I will report back if I'm now able to keep this computer up and running for longer than half a day.

WISH ME LUCK.

Also, the front USB ports do not work, there's 6 in the back. I have my keyboard and sometimes my gamepad connected to some of them.