USB external hard drive casues Laptop to freeze

macman

What happens if you try it in another USB port on the same machine? You need to narrow down the error.

DiiFMaritime

When the external hard drive is plugged into any of the laptop's USB port, the laptop freezes

visidigi

ok it sounds like your voltages have dropped.

You could remove all external devices from the laptop, and rollback the driver you have installed on the laptop.

Start > Settings > Control Panel > System > Device Manager > Expand Universal Serial Bus Controller > right click properties > click driver tab > click roll back driver.

See if that works (after a reboot) if not you might need to dig out the latest drivers for your laptop and install them (windows update may have fed your system a conflicting driver for example).

mart44

Maybe the USB socket has stopped delivering enough power for the drive to work. Perhaps it's the drive itself in as much as it has started needing a bit more power than the computer's USB socket is capable of delivering (drive bearings gone slightly stiff?). If the drive works OK on another computer, a work-around might be to use a powered USB hub and plug it into that.

DiiFMaritime

visidigi wrote: »

ok it sounds like your voltages have dropped.

You could remove all external devices from the laptop, and rollback the driver you have installed on the laptop.

Start > Settings > Control Panel > System > Device Manager > Expand Universal Serial Bus Controller > right click properties > click driver tab > click roll back driver.

See if that works (after a reboot) if not you might need to dig out the latest drivers for your laptop and install them (windows update may have fed your system a conflicting driver for example).

Don't think Windows has updated recently, as I think installing the updates happens when you shut down? and I have not had one of those for a while - at least not since I last successfully used my external hard drive.

When trying to roll back, the message "the software you are trying to install for this hardware has not passed Windows Logo testing to verify its compatibility with Windows XP. Continuing installation may impair or destabilise the correct operation of you system..........

Also the driver date is saying 23/05/2005?!

visidigi

check for new drivers on the manufacturers site in that case...

GunJack

DiiFMaritime wrote: »

When trying to roll back, the message "the software you are trying to install for this hardware has not passed Windows Logo testing to verify its compatibility with Windows XP. Continuing installation may impair or destabilise the correct operation of you system..........

Also the driver date is saying 23/05/2005?!

this in itself may not be a problem - it usually means they didn't get it tested when it was built...There's plenty of gen stuff around that flags up this warning

danthemoneysavingman

have you tried this:
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=external+USB+drive+freezes+computer

first port of call every time...

DiiFMaritime

Reinstalled Windows and in the first instance of plugging in the external hard drive, it worked. But subsequent to Windows Automatic updates, it freezes the laptop once I plug it in, so back to square one