USB Crashes Windows 7?
January 25, 2010 2:46 PM   Subscribe

Windows 7 x64 desktop gives me a BSOD (blue screen) whenever I insert my USB thumb drive/memory stick. Thumbdrive works fine on all other computers.

Home-built Windows 7 64-bit desktop.
OCZ Rally2 16GB USB thumbdrive I have had for a year or so.

Immediately upon insertion (to any of several USB ports) I get a BSOD and restart. If I just leave the drive in, however, Windows reboots and recognizes the drive just fine. Even if I insert it while Windows is booting up, it behaves normally.

The drive works fine on my WinXP laptop and a friend's macbook pro. I have done a full format of the drive, to no avail. My google-fu is failing me a bit as I can't find very many helpful answers. Anyone?
posted by jckll to Technology (6 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Does any other USB thumbdrive (or, actually, any USB device) also cause a panic?

At any rate, it almost certainly isn't the device, but the drivers on the Windows 7 box. Or something that hooks into the drivers to "mount" the contents of the drive so that Explorer can present them to you.

Some thumbdrives have a little program they auto-run on insert to give you some sort of value-add. In my experience, it is best to find some way of blowing that away (a regular disk util format will not remove this little program because it is usually on a different "partition") because I rarely need the value-add they provide. And this little program can cause problems.

See if your device is one of these (does it mount /2/ volumes on the Mac when you plug it in? If so, it is one of the devices I'm thinking of) and if so, see if the manufacturer provides the utility to remove it. Then format it again and see if the problem persists.
posted by clvrmnky at 3:00 PM on January 25, 2010


Response by poster: I have not tried other USB thumb drives, but I have plenty of USB devices plugged in that work fine. Everything from mouse/keyboard to webcam to wifi to WD hard drive.

I will look into a full format (probably with PM or other such partition software?) and test out a few other thumbdrives.
posted by jckll at 3:18 PM on January 25, 2010


My google-fu is failing me a bit as I can't find very many helpful answers.

I assume you've googled the STOP error code? Have you also made sure that you have the most up-to-date drivers for your hardware? Especially storage controllers?

Some thumbdrives have a little program they auto-run on insert...can cause problems.

Unlikely. Such programs would have to run in user (not kernel) mode, and wouldn't cause a BSOD.
posted by randomstriker at 4:22 PM on January 25, 2010


Post the details of the BSOD. It usually points to the culprit. Might have the info in event manager if it was able to write to it.
posted by damn dirty ape at 4:59 PM on January 25, 2010


Does the USB drive work in other Win7 computers?
posted by cowmix at 6:05 AM on January 26, 2010


Response by poster: Is anyone still here?

-I don't have any other Windows 7 computers to test against.

-This is the output from the Windows crash manager/diagnostic thingie AFTER I reboot from a BSOD:

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: BlueScreen
OS Version: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.256.1
Locale ID: 1033

Additional information about the problem:
BCCode: 3b
BCP1: 00000000C0000005
BCP2: FFFFF80003364FE0
BCP3: FFFFF8800299D740
BCP4: 0000000000000000
OS Version: 6_1_7600
Service Pack: 0_0
Product: 256_1

Files that help describe the problem:
C:\Windows\Minidump\012710-20030-01.dmp
C:\Users\me\AppData\Local\Temp\WER-1873041-0.sysdata.xml

Read our privacy statement online:
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If the online privacy statement is not available, please read our privacy statement offline:
C:\Windows\system32\en-US\erofflps.txt


Anybody?
posted by jckll at 4:54 PM on January 28, 2010


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