USB Devices Stop Working after a few minutes

Gaddorm

New member
Hey there,

I've been researching this issue for over a day and have yet to find any solution.

I have windows 7 installed now, upgraded from Vista and everything worked okay originally. Now, when I plug in any of my USB sticks, they work initially but end up hanging after a few minutes or when I try to replug them in, the OS says the device has malfunctioned and isn't installed correctly.

The same goes with my iPod. The only thing that works is to leave it plugged in and restart the computer, then it will work again for another few minutes before it stops recognizing USB devices. I don't have any other devices connected, so that isn't it. I tried uninstalling all the USB drivers, restarting, letting them reinstall and the same thing happens.

Any solutions to this problem?
 

My Computer

OS
Windows 7
Hi and Welcome to Windows 7 forums. Fill out your system specs what motherboard ram ect. I had this same sort of problem nothing would fix it. I ended up getting a different motherboard. Motherboard I had was from MSI.

What USB Universal Host Controller is your MB using ?
 

My Computer

Computer Manufacturer/Model Number
Me,Myself and I
OS
Windows 7 build 7229 32 bit & Build 7600 32bit
CPU
Intel Core2Duo E6300 1.8Ghz 2M 1066FSB Socket 775
Motherboard
ASUS P5B-Deluxe
Memory
4Gb OCZ Dual Channel PC3200 DDR 400MHz Gold Gamer eXtreme
Graphics Card(s)
PCI-E ATI Radeon HD 3650 1GB
Sound Card
SoundMAX Integrated Digital HD Audio
Monitor(s) Displays
Hp 2035 LCD Screen
Screen Resolution
1600 x 1200 pixels
Hard Drives
Seagate 1TB 7200rpm
Intel(R) ICH8R/DH SATA RAID 0 Controller
PSU
CoolMaster 550W
Case
Some thing I picked up at PCCLUB
Cooling
I'm good see other info
Keyboard
Logitech G15
Mouse
HP Laser Gaming Laser Mouse 3200 DPI
Internet Speed
Speed Test 5800 Kbits/sec - 485 Kbits/sec
Other Info
CPU-Thermaltake CL-P0114 120mm Big Typhoon CPU Cooler
Hard Drives- 2 Thermaltake A2376 Aluminum HDD Cooling Fans
Frankly, I would try a clean install of Win 7 and see if you have the same problems. But you need to let us know what your system configuration is. What Win 7 build are you using? 32 or 64-bit? Motherboard? BIOS rev?
 

My Computer

Computer Manufacturer/Model Number
Custom workstation /// Lenovo X61t tablet notebook
OS
Windows 7 RTM x64
CPU
Core i7 980X @ 4.04GHz OC /// Core Duo L7500 @ 1.6GHz
Motherboard
Asus P6T6 WS Revolution ///
Memory
12GB G. Skill @ DDR-1600 OC /// 4GB
Graphics Card(s)
Saphire HD4870 Toxic 1GB /// Intel Mobile GMA X3100
Monitor(s) Displays
Dual Eizo 24" SX2461W /// 12"
Screen Resolution
1920x1200 /// 1400x1050
Hard Drives
Workstation:
5x 750GB Barracuda-11 on Areca ARC-1220;
4x 1.5TB Barracuda-11 on Intel ICH10R;
Volumes:
300GB RAID 0, 2.7TB RAID 10 on Intel;
100GB RAID 0, 1.4TB RAID 10 on Areca ///
Notebook: G.Skill Titan 256GB SSD
PSU
Tagan ITZ 1100
Case
GHS-1500 ///
Cooling
Thermalright IFX-14 + a slew of stealth fans ///
Keyboard
Logitech Edge ///
Mouse
Logitech Wireless Optical Trackball
Internet Speed
5Mbps down / 820Kbps up
Other Info
Main use: photography;
DVD Drive: L.G GGW-H20L Blu-Ray / DVD;
OC: QPI/DRAM @ 1.33v, CPU @ 1.293v, DRAM Bus @ 1.65v, CPU PLL @ 1.88v, CPU mult = 25x, BCLK = 160, DDR3-1604 @ 7-8-7-24
do i have to start another thread or i can join this?
i have a similar problem.
My External HDD stop working during coping files.
It still shows in the My computer but EMPTY (can open it but there is no folders).
It shows in disk management as RAW disk.( like it is new and unformatted)
and the most weird thing is - it will still show that way if i UNPLUG it! (until restart of the PC)

this ex-HDD was (and is) working fine in Vista using the same usb cable and slots (2 of them, for additional power. But it is working even with one slot, just not recharging fast enough. recharging - because it is also a media-player).
after restart - all is fine until i try to move some files to it again. (it is not 100% reproducible, it happens 3 times out of..may be 10)

My specs are in profile, and i am using RTM build
 

My Computer

OS
windows 7
CPU
phenom II 940
Motherboard
ASUS m3n-HD-HDMI
Memory
kingston hyperX 800 (CL4) 8 gb
Graphics Card(s)
Geforce GTX 260
Monitor(s) Displays
DELL 2407, samsung 2233RZ
Hard Drives
sata seagate 7200.11 1 tb
sata seagate 7200.10 750 gb
sata seagate 7200.10 250 gb
PSU
FSP 700W
Cooling
standard amd cooler
Both of you - can you heck to see if your USB ports are set to turn off to save power?

You may have power issues b/c of spotty motherboard / chipset drivers that W7 'borrowed' from Vista....

Check for updated drivers from your hardware manufacturers respectively for W7....
 

My Computers

System One System Two

  • Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    Computer Manufacturer/Model Number
    The Beast Model A (homebrew)
    OS
    Windows 11 21H2 Current build
    CPU
    AMD Ryzen 9 3950X
    Motherboard
    MSI MEG X570 GODLIKE
    Memory
    4 * 32 GB - Corsair Vengeance 3600 MHz
    Graphics Card(s)
    EVGA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti XC3 ULTRA GAMING (12G-P5-3955-KR)
    Sound Card
    Realtek® ALC1220 Codec
    Monitor(s) Displays
    2x Eve Spectrum ES07D03 4K Gaming Monitor (Matte) | Eve Spec
    Screen Resolution
    3x 3840 x 2160
    Hard Drives
    3x Samsung 980 Pro NVMe PCIe 4 M.2 2 TB SSD (MZ-V8P2T0B/AM) } 3x Sabrent Rocket NVMe 4.0 1 TB SSD
    PSU
    PC Power & Cooling’s Silencer Series 1050 Watt, 80 Plus Plat
    Case
    Fractal Design Define 7 XL Dark ATX Full Tower Case
    Cooling
    SteelSeries Apex Pro Wired Gaming Keyboard
    Keyboard
    SteelSeries Apex Pro
    Mouse
    Logitech MX Master 3S | MX Master 3 for business
    Internet Speed
    AT&T LightSpeed Gigabit Duplex Ftth
    Antivirus
    Windows Defender + MB 3
    Browser
    Nightly (default) + Firefox (stable),Chrome, Edge
  • Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model Number
    Dell Latitude E5470
    OS
    ChromeOS Flex Dev Channel (current)
    CPU
    Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-6300U CPU @ 2.40GHz, 2501 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)
    Motherboard
    Dell
    Memory
    16 GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    Intel(R) HD Graphics 520
    Sound Card
    Intel(R) HD Graphics 520 + RealTek Audio
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Dell laptop display 15"
    Screen Resolution
    1920 * 1080
    Hard Drives
    Toshiba 128GB M.2 22300 drive
    INTEL Cherryville 520 Series SSDSC2CW180A 180 GB SATA III SSD
    PSU
    Dell
    Case
    Dell
    Cooling
    Dell
    Keyboard
    Dell
    Mouse
    Logitech MX Master 3S (shared w. Sys 1) | Dell TouchPad
    Internet Speed
    AT&T LightSpeed Gigabit Duplex Ftth
We're having similar problems here too - new install of Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit. USB ports worked fine on original installation, no errors detected, but then discovered a week or so later that intermittently any USB2 devices just die (external drives, mobile phone etc.) but USB1 devices (keyboard, mouse, Skype phone) continue to work.

Have looked everywhere for a solution but not found anything yet so if anyone has any pointers that'd be a great help.

We're running Biostar GF7100P-M7S mobo which has an nVidia 7100 chipset - we're got the latest nVidia chipset and video drivers installed but its using the standard Microsoft USB drivers, not nVidia ones.

This problem is only happening on Win7 - if I put my old WinXP Pro disc in, USB2 ports work absolutely fine for as long as they like.
 

My Computer

Computer Manufacturer/Model Number
Own build
OS
Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
CPU
Intel Core2Quad 2.66GHz
Motherboard
Biostar GF7100P-M7S
Memory
4Gb
Graphics Card(s)
nVidia 8600GT 1Gb
Sound Card
Onboard Realtek HD Audio
Monitor(s) Displays
Hannspree 19" New York
Hard Drives
Maxtoe 320Gb S-ATA
I've been having a very similar problem and have been researching this for about a week now. There is alot of talk about x64 and USB power issues, and making sure that the system is set to not power down, changing memory, motherboard or computer problems, etc... But I've done everything from updating my BIOS to the latest and making sure that the BIOS does not allow for certain power saving modes, disabling Win7 sleep mode updating the drivers of my Logitech trackball, Changing to a wireless mouse, etc... But no matter what I try my laptop will constantly (at least one to two times a day) just drop whatever is plugged into the drive.

Once this happens you cannot get them reinitialized. The only solution is to reboot completely. There is also no information in the reliability reports.

I simply cannot find any information from any of these sites that indicate that this is anything bit a Win7 issue. I'm starting to get worried about the stability of the OS. I ran the RC since the first week it was available with no problems at all. I've had the actual release installed for about a week and have had ALOT of USB problems (external drives and mice) as well as 3 different BSOD - USB, and 2 that were just STOP.

I love the new features but I haven't had any issues with XP or even the Win7 RC.

If ANYone has any suggestions (I can only hope).
 

Attachments

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My Computer

Computer Manufacturer/Model Number
IBM T43
OS
Windows 7 Professional
CPU
Centrino
Memory
1.5G
Graphics Card(s)
ATI
Hard Drives
40G
i've solved it! kinda.
On the microsoft support website there are many hotfixes that are NOT available in windows auto-update yet. The common description of them has this part: "use this hotfix ONLY if you have this problem, because it was not fully tested yet, and you cant live without it". Well, i was not scared :)

Unfortutately, i dont know which hotfix helped me. There is a guy in my country who distribute the packs of this updates on the local torrent tracker. I think the update that helped me was in the last october updates pack(its ~20 updates 60 mb total). So, you have several options:
a) wait until it is available in auto-update.
b) search through support section of microsoft website.
c) contact me on tohdom@ gmail.com i can upload you the hotfix packs

good luck

ps.
i want to describe my problem again (which i solved) because maybe you guys have another problem:
my USB-HDD cripple win7 during file-transfers after few normal minutes of trasfer (Deferred Procedure Calls - 100% cpu). win7 see the empty hdd, it still have usb connection, but without any hdd-functionality. Only reboot can fix 100% cpu issue. USB mouse, keyboard works fine.
 
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My Computer

OS
windows 7
CPU
phenom II 940
Motherboard
ASUS m3n-HD-HDMI
Memory
kingston hyperX 800 (CL4) 8 gb
Graphics Card(s)
Geforce GTX 260
Monitor(s) Displays
DELL 2407, samsung 2233RZ
Hard Drives
sata seagate 7200.11 1 tb
sata seagate 7200.10 750 gb
sata seagate 7200.10 250 gb
PSU
FSP 700W
Cooling
standard amd cooler
I don't know if this will help in Windows 7 but it helped somewhat with XP.

Just a suggestion.

In device manager find the drive that is the USB drive and try to optimize it if possible. I don't know nor can test it. I went back to XP for my ATI Remote wonder that I use with ZoomPlayer to watch my videos was not working correctly without issues under Windows 7.
 

My Computer

OS
XP
well, after month of using my usb-device under win7 i can conclude - there is definitely a hotfix fixing this issue.
read my previous post.
 

My Computer

OS
windows 7
CPU
phenom II 940
Motherboard
ASUS m3n-HD-HDMI
Memory
kingston hyperX 800 (CL4) 8 gb
Graphics Card(s)
Geforce GTX 260
Monitor(s) Displays
DELL 2407, samsung 2233RZ
Hard Drives
sata seagate 7200.11 1 tb
sata seagate 7200.10 750 gb
sata seagate 7200.10 250 gb
PSU
FSP 700W
Cooling
standard amd cooler

My Computer

Computer Manufacturer/Model Number
Own build
OS
Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
CPU
Intel Core2Quad 2.66GHz
Motherboard
Biostar GF7100P-M7S
Memory
4Gb
Graphics Card(s)
nVidia 8600GT 1Gb
Sound Card
Onboard Realtek HD Audio
Monitor(s) Displays
Hannspree 19" New York
Hard Drives
Maxtoe 320Gb S-ATA
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