PC wont shut down with USB device connected

Posted by: peverhoe, December 17th, 2006, 2:46pm

I have a problem with my Dell Laptop. If I try to stop it it wnt shut off. I have to us the on/off button and press it for some time, than it will shut off.

I have Windows XP Home (SP2).

It happen mostly when I add a device such as my Ipod with harddisk to the USB ports.

Can anyone give me a clue what to do to get this working as it should ?

Regards from Netherlands

Posted by: dlwolff0, December 17th, 2006, 11:50pm; Reply: 1

When you add a USB device while Windows is running, you should use the "Safely Remove Hardware" wizard to remove the device before you shut Windows down.
There is an icon in the task bar {grey rectangle with a green arrow above it} put there just for this purpose.
Just unplugging USB devices won't hurt the machine physically, but it can mess up the software.

Posted by: peverhoe, December 18th, 2006, 7:07pm; Reply: 2

I know this and always do it like you suggest, it is not caused by this.

Posted by: dlwolff0, December 20th, 2006, 1:56am; Reply: 3

After some research, it seems this type of problem has occured in the past due to a BIOS problem.
Check the Dell website and see if there is a BIOS update for your laptop.

Posted by: bone_apart, January 10th, 2007, 3:10pm; Reply: 4

Hi all,

I'm experiencing a problem similar to the one peverhoe described. I just recently got a Sony DRX-820U USB DVD writer to use with my Acer TravelMate 2303LCi laptop. The laptop has shut down just fine prior to my using the Sony writer.

I always try to shut down the computer gracefully, so I use the stop device icon in the system tray to disconnect the DVD writer. Oddly enough, this worked successfully the first time I tried removing the Sony writer, but on all subsequent attempts, the stop device window just sits on the screen with an hourglass without ever doing anything. When I manually stop the job and check the Device Manager, the system still shows the laptop is still recognizing the DVD writer.

I'm convinced this is the root of my shutdown problems. The computer will sit on the "saving your settings" screen when I attempt to power down, but the laptop never shuts off, forcing me to either disconnect the power cable or remove the battery. Turning the computer back on does not produce the dreaded "Windows did not shut down properly" screen, but I am very concerned about having to unplug the laptop each time I want to shut it down after using the DVD writer. The computer does not power down regardless of whether or not I turn off the writer or even unplug the USB connection prior to shutting down Windows. I should mention that the laptop shuts down without any problems so long as I do not attempt to plug in the DVD writer.

Does anyone have any possible solutions I can try?

Thanks a bunch,

BA

Posted by: peverhoe, January 10th, 2007, 4:58pm; Reply: 5

I was the one who posted this message. In the meantime I found 2 solutions :
1. I found out that it was a Window XP problem, probably I lost part of XP that made my computer act like described. I ran the original XP disc over the old program and after that it worked perfectly again. I did not erase but just repaired it. All the other programs were still there, I had tro do some settings like time, date etc etc. Took me about an hour.

2 Before this I installed a shareware program called "superfast shutdown". If you google "superfastshutdown" you will find how to install this program. I alway shut my laptop down with this and it always shut the computer all the way. Later I reinstalled the XP disc. And now I can again use the normal shutdown procedure too.

For your info I always use the remove hardware icon before unhooking my USB equipment.

Print Topic