Help to diagnose a (probable) hardware issue.

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Hi all, completely exasperated.

Some months ago, I started getting an apparent USB freeze up which was accompanied by an issue on bootup where the machine would hang and this little wheel would spin next to DHCP before the boot completed.

It would be remedied if I unplugged the computer from the power for a few minutes and things would be OK for some time.

I thought that my SSD had crashed so I bought a new one and my Machine has been running fine since.

This morning, my USB 3 hub vanished along with all drives connected to it and again, I unplugged the power and rebooted and the drives returned.

As soon as I loaded them, they vanished again.

I though it might be the hub, so I plugged a drive directly into the PC – no luck.

On another USB 3 port, I have a USB 2 hub as well, and I swapped them. The USB 2 hub continued to work on the other port and the USB 3 hub failed on the port that previously had the USB 2 hub.

USB 3 drives are recognized when plugged into the USB 2 hub.

I have run a Malwarebytes scan and it came back clean.

I have also noticed, that the task manager is not normal for WinX, it is more like the old task manager from XP in appearance. My WinX installation is an upgrade from Win7.

The whole day I have had no USB 3 functionality and a number of BSOD’s which result in a reboot.

The C drive is not visible in the P.O.S.T. screen which is followed by the DHCP boot error.

I have found that unplugging the (SSD C-drive) SATA cable from the MOBO and then plugging it in again makes the drive visible and allows the PC to boot.

This last issue leads me to think that there may be a hardware issue which is related to the SATA connector ion the MOBO – but of course that doesn’t really explain the USB disappearance.

HELP.

Graphic design, Animator, Moviemaker, Editor and Photographer. Amateur computer techie.

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? says:

Rick Corbett, a great ask woody poster turned me on to this nirsoft usb util:

https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/usb_devices_view.html

shows every USB nook and cranny with ease…

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Rusty1963

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You need to go into Device Manager, right click on the top item in the tree (right side of window), and choose Show all hidden devices.

Now look for any USB listing that has an error symbol by it. If you find any, right click on each and choose “Remove” or “Uninstall”.

Once you have removed all of the erroneous USB listings, right click on the top item in the tree, and choose Refresh listing, or whatever it is called, to get it to read and show a new listing. Show all hidden devices. Hopefully all of the erroneous USB listings are gone; and hopefully USB now works for you. Reboot if it didn’t fix it.

If that didn’t fix it, then remove ALL erroneous listings, not just the USB listings. (Be sure to look among the hidden listings as well.) Refresh the listing, and see if that fixed it. Reboot if it didn’t fix it.

If that didn’t fix it, then you might go to the PC vendor’s web site and see if they have any new USB3 drivers available for download and install. Also, Windows update might produce a working USB3 driver. (I know that most people don’t like to get drivers via Windows update, but sometimes nothing else will work, so it’s worth a try.)

Also, see if there are any USB3 drivers which are dated prior to when USB3 first quit working. That might be the driver which will fix this.

For future reference, if you have Windows 10 Professional (not Home), then edit the Group Policy. Look for the Windows Update section. Tell it not to allow driver updates when you do regular updates, then click Apply. Doing so will hopefully prevent a misbehaving driver from automatically downloading and installing itself.

Keep in mind that USB3 is a relatively new standard. They still don’t have all of the bugs worked out of it.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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Rusty1963

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I suggest details of the computer (make, model, etc.) may be helpful, as many mainboard manufacturers now implement drives like the primary SSD using a USB bus.

Even my 5-year-old Dell Latitude E7440 laptop shows its mSATA and SD card drives as ejectable USB devices.

MrJimPhelps wrote:

Keep in mind that USB3 is a relatively new standard.

For info, only USB 3.2 is a relatively new standard… and even that’s 2 years old now:

January 2010 – The first certified consumer products to use USB 3.0 were announced, including mainboards from Asus and Gigabyte, i.e. just over a year that the USB 3.0 specification was completed in November 2008 and made the transition to the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), the managing body of USB specifications

July 2013 – USB 3.1 released

September 2017 – USB 3.2 released

Hope this helps…

 

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[Rusty1963]

Thanks Mr.JimPhelps for taking the time to answer.
[You need to go into Device Manager, right click on the top item in the tree (right side of window), and choose Show all hidden devices.]

Thanks, I looked to do this but my tree runs down the left and there is nothing on the right side of the window. That said, I have right clicked everywhere and not found an option to ‘show all hidden devices’.

I did what was suggested by ‘anonymous’ and am posting a screenshot of the result. At the bottom of the screenshot is one of the device manager tree.

After struggling yesterday with no USB 3, I woke up this morning and everything appears to be working after a reboot.

Haven’t loaded the machine yet and won’t be doing so for some time, will keep you all posted.

I’m not so great at interpreting what I see here, but it appears as if everything is ok.

Is it possible that the issue was caused by the supply voltage dropping below necessary levels ?         (I’m an electrician and never though to measure – My bad)

Graphic design, Animator, Moviemaker, Editor and Photographer. Amateur computer techie.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 9 months ago by Rusty1963.
• This reply was modified 5 years, 9 months ago by Rusty1963. Reason: add info
• This reply was modified 5 years, 9 months ago by Rusty1963. Reason: Possible useful information

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Rusty1963 wrote:

That said, I have right clicked everywhere and not found an option to ‘show all hidden devices’.

The option to Show hidden devices is in the View menu:

Hope this helps…

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? says:

you can see more\all “Hidden Devices” if needed. use admin cmd:

Type cmd.exe in the textbox and click OK.
Type set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1 and hit ENTER.
Type cd\windows\system32 and hit ENTER.
Type start devmgmt.msc and hit ENTER.
When the device manager opens, click the View menu.
Click Show Hidden Devices

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Rusty1963 wrote:

Is it possible that the issue was caused by the supply voltage dropping below necessary levels ?

Possible, yes. Probable, I’d usually say no, but…

PC power supplies tend to be fairly tolerant to all kinds of weird things in the input when healthy, if you have a model with any kind of management instrumentation in there you might even see notices about that in the Windows event log or somewhere similar.

Given that there seem to be motherboard-related issues as well, including not finding a drive to boot from, the supply voltage might be worth checking. Especially if the computer is still under warranty.

Another possible reasons would be the power supply might be going bad, or the motherboard.

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[b]

Rusty1963 wrote:

I have also noticed, that the task manager is not normal for WinX, it is more like the old task manager from XP in appearance.

You probably just need to click “More details” at the bottom left of the Task Manager window..

• This reply was modified 5 years, 9 months ago by b.

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Rusty1963

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Rusty1963 wrote:

an issue on bootup where the machine would hang and this little wheel would spin next to DHCP before the boot completed

This is likely to be your network adapter looking for a boot server before booting from the hard disk. Pressing Esc should cancel the boot process, does it?

Rusty1963 wrote:

if I unplugged the computer from the power for a few minutes and things would be OK for some time

Your machine may have corruption in the BIOS setup. Can you go into the BIOS setup and reset to factory defaults?

cheers, Paul

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Rusty1963

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Paul T wrote:

Your machine may have corruption in the BIOS setup. Can you go into the BIOS setup and reset to factory defaults?

I did the bios reset and then couldn’t boot at all, I can’t remember the exact words but something to do with ‘grub’ (isn’t that a linux term?) – I realised that the reset had switched off rapid storage technology and switched it on.

Booted up first time and has worked for the last 12 hours which included a period of about an hour under load.

thanks Paul.

Graphic design, Animator, Moviemaker, Editor and Photographer. Amateur computer techie.

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b wrote:

You probably just need to click “More details” at the bottom left of the Task Manager window.

Yes, never thought of that, since I’ve never clicked on ‘fewer details’.

Graphic design, Animator, Moviemaker, Editor and Photographer. Amateur computer techie.

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Rick Corbett wrote:

I suggest details of the computer (make, model, etc.) may be helpful, as many mainboard manufacturers now implement drives like the primary SSD using a USB bus.

I built it myself, I suppose it’s an Asus, since both the motherboard and GPU are Asus.

Graphic design, Animator, Moviemaker, Editor and Photographer. Amateur computer techie.

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Hi again all

I am still suffering from the above problem.

I have now flashed the BIOS and reinstalled the utility drivers for my motherboard.

Reinstalling the chipset drivers resulted in a failure.

The screenshot is a combination of 3, the main picture at left being Msinfo for my PC.
The one at top right is the fatal error recorded when trying to install the chipset drivers
The one center right is just showing the driver folder before setup.

Can anyone see anything that may help?

Graphic design, Animator, Moviemaker, Editor and Photographer. Amateur computer techie.

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? says:

maybe this?

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/information-protection/tpm/initialize-and-configure-ownership-of-the-tpm

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I suggest you replace your motherboard.  The least troublesome and most reliable route would be an identical motherboard.  If you built this one, then you know you’re looking at the better part of a day.

A motherboard that has grown weary can began to throw all sorts of seemingly unrelated errors.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

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bbearren wrote:

I suggest you replace your motherboard. The least troublesome and most reliable route would be an identical motherboard. If you built this one, then you know you’re looking at the better part of a day.

and then there’s the installation of windows and all umpteen programs……

I have managed to find a replacement motherboard in Australia – one of only 3 available.

In the meantime, despite not having been able to install the chipset drivers, and not wishing to jinx it, I have had 24 hours of unbroken use since flashing the bios.

Thanks again to Paul T for suggesting possible BIOS corruption, the reset didn’t work, but maybe the flash did.

Graphic design, Animator, Moviemaker, Editor and Photographer. Amateur computer techie.

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Rusty1963 wrote:

and then there’s the installation of windows and all umpteen programs……

That isn’t at all necessary.  I replaced a faulty motherboard on my daily driver DIY desktop PC a couple of weeks ago.  And I have three SSD’s and three HDD’s.  I took everything out of the case except for the PSU, replaced the motherboard, then put everything back in the case in the same order as I had removed it.

I plugged it in, powered it up, and I was right back in business.  After everything checked out OK, I updated the UEFI/BIOS to the same version I had been running, and it’s been smooth sailing since.  You’re just replacing the motherboard.  Whatever you have on your drive(s) will still be there.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

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