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Applications hang while working on documents from USB drive

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On two completely different machines running Windows 7 64-bit, applications (such as Visual Studio 2010, gVim) freeze for 10-40 seconds while writing to files located on a USB hard drive or SD card connected via USB. This happens every 2-5 attempts to save the files I'm working on.

My scenario is usually editing a website in Visual Studio or gVim. The website's files are kept on a USB hard drive. In this particular case at work, the hard drive is a "250 GB Seagate Expansion Portable Drive" but that does not seem to matter. At home, I tried working off of a Transcend 32 GB SDHC card connected via the USB adapter.

I have tried setting the drive policies to "Better performance" and that does seem to minorly affect how often the applications freeze but not how long they freeze. If I try to click on the application window's client area, they turn white and I get the waiting cursor. After time, they become responsive again.

Work PC: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit, Dell Precision WorkStation T5500, Intel ICH10 USB Host Controller, NVIDIA Quadro NVS420

Home PC: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit, Gigabyte GA-MA770T-UD3P, Standard OpenHCD USB Host Controller, ATI Radeon HD 4600

I included the video card information because it appears there was a known and fixed issue with NVIDIA drivers. This is not the same issue. My work and home PCs cannot be more different.

This issue DOES NOT occur with Windows XP SP3 with either the Seagate hard drive or Transcend SDHC card. I can work off those drives in XP with Visual Studio and there is no freezing whatsoever.

I have scoured the Internet for anyone else having this issue but cannot dig up anything useful. That is surprising because I have encountered this on two of the Windows 7 64-bit machines. I have not tried it in the 32-bit version yet.

I am going to have to stop working off USB drives. That is not a workaround. It is disappointing and frustrating.

I hope this report helps an engineer locate and fix a problem in Windows 7. If there is anything I can do to help, please respond.

Thank you, Ryan Westphal

Friday, January 21, 2011 5:46 PM

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Hi Ryan,

Does the issue occur on the local disk? You can test the documents with different USB drives. If the issue persists, it can be related to USB controller not working properly. I suggest reinstalling USB Controller from the following link.

http://blogs.technet.com/b/asiasupp/archive/2010/11/23/error-message-one-of-the-usb-device-attached-to-this-computer-has-malfunctioned-and-windows-does-not-recognise-it.aspx

Hope it helps.

Regards,

Niki
Please remember to click "Mark as Answer" on the post that helps you, and to click "Unmark as Answer" if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.
- Marked as answer by Nicholas Li Friday, January 28, 2011 9:28 AM
Tuesday, January 25, 2011 9:58 AM

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Here are a couple images of notepad freezing while saving to a JavaScript file on the Seagate:

1. Notepad itself, the usual Windows 7 unresponsive app behavior

http://lechuck.trippingthebits.com/win7/usb-freeze/notepad.png

2. Process Explorer, based on CPU & I/O there's not too much going on

http://lechuck.trippingthebits.com/win7/usb-freeze/proc.png

3. Process Explorer, notepad.exe threads tab, State changes from Wait:WrUserRequest to Wait:Executive, Cycles Delta clears, then nothing else happens until State changes back and notepad comes back to life

http://lechuck.trippingthebits.com/win7/usb-freeze/threads.png

Friday, January 21, 2011 7:05 PM
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Hi Ryan,

Does the issue occur on the local disk? You can test the documents with different USB drives. If the issue persists, it can be related to USB controller not working properly. I suggest reinstalling USB Controller from the following link.

http://blogs.technet.com/b/asiasupp/archive/2010/11/23/error-message-one-of-the-usb-device-attached-to-this-computer-has-malfunctioned-and-windows-does-not-recognise-it.aspx

Hope it helps.

Regards,

Niki
Please remember to click "Mark as Answer" on the post that helps you, and to click "Unmark as Answer" if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.
- Marked as answer by Nicholas Li Friday, January 28, 2011 9:28 AM
Tuesday, January 25, 2011 9:58 AM
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Hi Niki,

No, this does not happen on the local disk. In fact, I've started using C:\Users\myname\Work as my working drive and since I want to keep everything pathed to K:, I use the old "subst K: C:\Users\myname\Work" to get mostly what I want.

I will try the USB controller you linked to and let you know if that helps.

Thank you,
Ryan Westphal

Monday, January 31, 2011 3:25 PM

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Applications hang while working on documents from USB drive

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