Solved Connected USB device slows entire computer to a crawl

[Galmak]

This has been an issue for some weeks and I have been trying to search answers for.. I've got a graphics tablet a Huion H610PRO(2048) that is a few years old now and as I was drawing I heard the notification sound when a USB becomes Unplugged and then the sound for when it gets plugged back in.

Not thinking much of it until my entire computer begins to slow down to a point I had no choice but to restart everything and even that took a while to happen.

Upon restarting my PC it would not fully boot up and would sit at the login screen where it says "Welcome" with an infinite loading wheel. 20 to 30 minutes pass before I made the decision to do a force restart which probably wasn't the smartest idea. I decided after that to unplug everything besides my Keyboard and Mouse and it booted up just fine with no issue.

Inserting all my USB devices back in one at a time watching to see if anything happens and saving the tablet itself for last and upon putting the device in the same thing happens and my computer starts slowing down to a crawl where it takes 5 or more minutes for even the simplest of tasks such as going into the control panel/device manager.

After all that I decided to Uninstall all tablets drivers and reinstalling them and once more restarting and trying again only to have the same issue occur so I uninstalled the drivers once more and did a clean sweep of registry stuff with CCleaner to make sure leftover stuff was gone and then instead this time installing an older driver version on a CD that came with my graphics tablet.. once again nothing changes and everything still slows and chugs to where simple tasks are a long wait except this time in the taskbar it says it was installing the driver software but after about 20 minutes of waiting it came up saying it was unsuccessful.

I started thinking maybe my motherboard was the issue but no other USB device causes this issue or any issue at all.. just the Huion Tablet I've tried every USB port I could and even used a USB hub but it all results in the same

I've tried the tablet on my friends PC and everything worked fine no Chugging or slowdown on his system and we are both running Windows 7 the only weird thing to happen was that his open FireFox system usage shot up to near 100% for a few moments and then everything was fine after.

Another weird thing is this whole slow down thing persists even after the tablet is unplugged from the computer and only functions normally after restarting the pc so I'm guessing maybe something somewhere got corrupted during the sudden disconnect/reconnect.. a driver or some such but I haven't got a clue which what to look for and what to monitor to narrow the search. Does anyone have an idea?

 

[iko22]

Hello Galmak, welcome to the Forum.

1) Can you confirm that if the Huion graphics device is not plugged into the computer, then your computer speed is normal?

2) Had you tried plugging in the graphics tablet lead into a different USB port? Any difference in performance?

30 Have you gone into Device Manager, and checked for yellow triangles with exclamation ("!") marks besides any device?

 

[SIW2]

then instead this time installing an older driver version on a CD that came with my graphics tablet.

Did you check the version number in device manager to make sure it is in fact using the older version?

 

[Galmak]

Hello Galmak, welcome to the Forum.

1) Can you confirm that if the Huion graphics device is not plugged into the computer, then your computer speed is normal?

2) Had you tried plugging in the graphics tablet lead into a different USB port? Any difference in performance?

30 Have you gone into Device Manager, and checked for yellow triangles with exclamation ("!") marks besides any device?

Hey there and thanks for the welcome!

1) Yes the slow down continues even after the device is disconnected from the USB port it does not return to normal speed until the computer is restarted.

2) I've plugged it into different ports and the same performance and issues still occur, no noticeable changes no matter the port

3) Yes I've gone into the manager and the only Exclamation was after I initially uninstalled/reinstalled drivers which is when the Graphics tablet was installing some driver of its own when it was plugged in, but, it failed the first few times before finally succeeding in installing it but even after that no noticeable changes occurred and no other yellow exclamations anywhere else I could see.

Did you check the version number in device manager to make sure it is in fact using the older version?

Yes it was running the correctly installed driver versions in both cases of old and new

 

[file3456]

When you plug in a device like a tablet or smartphone into a computer via USB, you can drag down the settings on the tablet or phone from the top and under the USB settings you have several options to chose from. Off the top of my head you have an option for just file transfers and another option to access the device or something or other. So with that, when you plug in the tablet pull the options screen down from the top in the tablet and look in the USB settings and try the most appropriate mode.

I'm thinking what's going on here is that a driver is acting up for the USB connection and causing the system to stall due to the wrong data transfer mode so to speak when you plug in your tablet.

If after you do this we can dive into finding out just what process of driver is responsible.

BTW, is your tablet using the latest OS by chance? Any tablet updates that may need to be installed from the manufacture?

 

[Galmak]

When you plug in a device like a tablet or smartphone into a computer via USB, you can drag down the settings on the tablet or phone from the top and under the USB settings you have several options to chose from. Off the top of my head you have an option for just file transfers and another option to access the device or something or other. So with that, when you plug in the tablet pull the options screen down from the top in the tablet and look in the USB settings and try the most appropriate mode.

I'm thinking what's going on here is that a driver is acting up for the USB connection and causing the system to stall due to the wrong data transfer mode so to speak when you plug in your tablet.

If after you do this we can dive into finding out just what process of driver is responsible.

BTW, is your tablet using the latest OS by chance? Any tablet updates that may need to be installed from the manufacture?

I do think you are right on a driver acting up but there doesn't appear to be any kind of USB setting when its plugged in for this Graphics tablet either I'm looking in the wrong place ( It doesn't appear in the "computer" section where the C: and Disk drives are located / where inserted Flash Drives and other inserted USB stuff usually appears/isn't being recognized or the stall and hang is so bad that it can't load it ) or it doesn't exist for the graphics tablet outside the attached drivers which don't have any sort of options like you describe. It also isn't a graphics tablet with a display screen so there's no window to pull down on it to see

Tablet Drivers and what not are the latest the manufacturer has for this model of Graphics Tablets and I've tried both the latest and old to oldest possible.

 

[file3456]

Just in case. From the manual.

1. Before installing, you need to uninstall other driver of similar products, including
the old driver of this product.
2. Before installing, please close all graphics software and anti-virus software to
avoid unnecessary mistake.


The manual isn't much of any help. Did you restart the computer after you installed the driver?

You shouldn't use Ccleaner's registry cleaner. It can and will mess things up. Use Revouninstaller to uninstall the software, but pay close attention at what registry entries it wants to uninstall. Some registry entries may not have anything to do with the driver at all.

 

[Galmak]

Just in case. From the manual.

1. Before installing, you need to uninstall other driver of similar products, including
the old driver of this product.
2. Before installing, please close all graphics software and anti-virus software to
avoid unnecessary mistake.


The manual isn't much of any help. Did you restart the computer after you installed the driver?

You shouldn't use Ccleaner's registry cleaner. It can and will mess things up. Use Revouninstaller to uninstall the software, but pay close attention at what registry entries it wants to uninstall. Some registry entries may not have anything to do with the driver at all.

Followed the manual. Restarting after installing/disabling anti-virus
I paid attention to the registry cleanup with cc but it didn't remove anything out of the ordinary aside from stuff that has LONG since been uninstalled and gone, but, I'll have to use Revoun from now on since it looks like it does everything CC does and more which is nice but still no changes with it

EDIT: Is there by chance a program I could use to monitor what drivers are being called when the device is plugged in?

 

[file3456]

EDIT: Is there by chance a program I could use to monitor what drivers are being called when the device is plugged in?

Yes, this is where we need to now move on to. The are a couple programs and one that I use is called Processhacker. Then there's Process Monitor and Process Explorer. In Process hacker you'd click on the process the tablet is using and right click properties and select the threads tab.

Now this may be hard to interpret though. If you look at your processes, look for the one that's consuming the most resources.

Overview - Process Hacker

Process Monitor - Windows Sysinternals | Microsoft Docs

Process Explorer - Windows Sysinternals | Microsoft Docs


Since this tablet also caused odd stuff to happen on a friends computer, this tablet may be poorly made. Was the driver installed on your friend's computer?

 

[Galmak]

I believe I managed to track down the culprit to a few things thanks to Process Monitor/Explorer including a program a friend mentioned might be useful, something called LatencyMon.

So far it appears it could be a few things

The USB drivers or the iastor.sys
I can't imagine it being the Iastor.sys or else I'd be having heaps of other issues like BSODs
It could also be my Security Essentials since even though I had it shut off it doesn't actually SHUTOFF and kinda just hangs out in the background regardless
It also might be a service that starts up during boot since the issue does NOT happen in safe-mode so i'll have to slowly shut those off until i see a change

I'll edit this post once I've done some more testing and stuff. I appreciate the help by the way those programs have been a savior in a lot of ways

 

[file3456]

Yeah, you can do a selective start up using msconfig, and there's Autoruns to help go over things one at a time as well.

Autoruns for Windows - Windows Sysinternals | Microsoft Docs

 

[Galmak]

Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving day. Took a bit of time and with the Holiday and wasn't able to get back here to report the situation. I have discovered it appears to have been TWO items causing issues so far when disabling things

For some reason, Microsoft Security Essentials was one of the culprits, why that would be I haven't a clue but surely reinstalling that would be enough to solve the issue.

The other would be the Tablet Pen Accessory Panel which in the past has caused some issue which is why I disabled it but for whatever reason, at some point, it decided it should turn itself back on and then crash and constantly send a crash log and producing an error window that doesn't actually appear which caused the slow-down.

But now I'm able to do things with my Tablet without any kind of slow-down, at least until I start turning stuff back on that I shut-off during Safe-Mode, but, right now I'm glad to finally be able to do things.

I'd like to thank you all for your help with my strange issue that's caused no short amount of frustration.
Truly thank you!

In the next day or so as I turn all the usual components and programs back on and if nothing else happens I'll Mark this as a solved case but so far it appears that the issue has been nailed down

 

[file3456]

I'd like to thank you all for your help with my strange issue that's caused no short amount of frustration.
Truly thank you!

Hey, it was Thanksgiving after all, right?



About Security Essentials. Goodbye Microsoft Security Essentials: Microsoft Now Recommends You Use a Third-Party Antivirus


MSE it pretty much like ClamAV except MSE is active while ClamAV is a scanner. I find a lot of the anti-virus software out there today is largely bloat and can and will cause issues. Not only that, but they are definition based so they won't stop polymorphic malware (ransomware, malware in the wild). So I don't even run any anti-virus software. Especially on this computer which is my gaming computer. I don't need shenanigans interfering, etc. And I'm a power user so I can't have anti-virus software get in my way.



So how do you defend yourself? I do four primary things:


1) Run my browser in the now free Sandboxie software. This will isolate your browser from your computer and should mitigate most attacks from malicious malware laced Ads, malicious java script, websites that have been hacked and turned into a watering hole, etc.



2) Periodic full 1:1 disk clones to external hard drives. If something major were to happen I can just pull out my full disk clone, boot the live USB or CD cloning software and clone my external hard drive back to my internal hard drive.



3) Scan each and every single cotton pickin' download at Virus Total. Whether you think the download is legit or not, SCAN IT! A hacker could hack into a legit website, alter their download/s and now you infected yourself. Such was the case many years ago with the Ccleaner program. Some hacker laced the so-called legit download of Ccleaner with malware and unsuspecting downloaders will infecting their computers. So scan all downloads at Virus Total. Now since Virus Total uses so many anti-virus engines you're bound to come up with a false positive or two, or ten. It largely depends what you got there. In one case, I had downloaded an IP scanner, but in the way it was coded Virus Total said some ten anti-virus engines said it was malware which I knew it wasn't. The rule of thumb is that if you see four or more hits then don't execute the file. Again, it depends on what it is you have there. Fun fact. A) Virus Total gets malware definitions from the U.S. Cyber Command, and B) Virus Total is now run by Google for what ever that's worth. LOL Still a good site though.



4) I scan the living crap out of my computer on a regular basis with stuff most people never heard of let alone use. I'm looking for newly created modules like DLLs, alternative data streams in files, comparing boot loader code to my baseline hash, I watch the network interface traffic and watch what is written, modified or deleted from the hard drive. LOL Yeah, this ship is ran tight. Probably better than any corporate server environment. On the email front, I don't allow the parsing of HTML and never load images unless I absolutely have to and I can absolutely trust the sender. I have a story on that. LOL I punked a hacker that tried to fool me. He/she created a fake phish page to what looked like a legit website login. So I used this website to load his page and just start logging in with all kinds of made up usernames and passwords. Then when I had enough of filling his database with random crap I went to his domain register and web hoster and reported him. LOL! I own my own websites so know all about the crap.


You may be interested in the following:



VirusTotal Uploader - check your files with VirusTotal


PhrozenSoft VirusTotal Uploader - upload files to VirusTotal for scanning


I don't use them myself but look promising. You will need a free Virus Total API key to check larger files.

 

[Galmak]

Appreciate the program recommendations, I'll have to check these out! I also like to apologize for not closing the thread yet, Christmas and the New years and stuff got all busy! but it does in fact look like it was the Panel that was the issue after turning everything back on - besides the panel so everything is back to 100%!

Again I'd like to thank everyone for their help in narrowing down potential problems as well as things that can help be of assistance in the future, these things have been a big help!

Again, thank you so much and I hope the holidays and new years have been kind to you!