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Computer locks when USB devices are connected

3K views 13 replies 3 participants last post by  mwoods651 
#1 ·
My computer locks up anytime that I connect it with a USB port. I've had an ipod for a while, and it's locked up all along, but I've just dealt with it. Recently I bought a new digital camera, and an external hard drive, and it does the same thing. It doesn't lock up right away, it takes about 10 minutes after its connected. Any help would be appreciated. I'm a bit computer stupid, so keep that in mind.
 
#6 ·
You can use one of the diagnostic apps like everest however nothing beats opening the case and giving the system a look with the Mark I eyeball. The motherboard should have the name and model silk-screened on to the board. the pw supply will have a label with the brand name, wattage, and amp rating. The ram will have the brand and timings on a label attached to the ram.

For the cpu, you should see that displayed during post [power ON self test] as the system starts.
 
#8 ·
You can use one of the diagnostic apps like everest however nothing beats opening the case and giving the system a look with the Mark I eyeball. The motherboard should have the name and model silk-screened on to the board. the pw supply will have a label with the brand name, wattage, and amp rating. The ram will have the brand and timings on a label attached to the ram.
For the cpu, you should see that displayed during post [power ON self test] as the system starts.
crjdriver, I would almost ALWAYS agree with what you say there , but there is NO way she is going to read the RAM labels without taking one out , and I dont think she is ready for that...............mwoods651 , if you take off the side of the tower , the PSU label is on a silver metal box at the top left hand side. Easy to read. Motherboard is the big GREEN board that everything sits on
 
#9 ·
Okay, the PSU label, is not in the top left corner or wherever. But if I take one side of the tower off, there is s a sticker. It makes no sense to me, but this is what it says

INV: 144244
S/N: 40007
CPU: 1278
MB: 9783
HDD: 0180
FDD: 0832
RWCD: 6297
MEM: 211
BdSetup: 24
Assembly: 94

The label is a printed one, but all those numbers are handwritten in.
Now if I take off the other side of the tower, The motherboard that you said would be green, mine is red, but I'm fairly certain that I'm looking at the right thing because it's what everything else is hooked up to. But I've looked and looked and I can't find a name on it anywhere. But there are two numbers that I could read off the motherboard, VT8235, which I googled and it took me to these link http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/chipsets/southbridge/vt8235/

the other is MSI N1996, which I think must be what type of motherboard it is.

As for the power supply, are you talking about inside the tower somewhere or the plug coming out the back? Regardless, I don't see a tag on anything.

As for the RAM, I don't even know what that's supposed to look like. But I went ot the control panel, to system, and found something that reads like this

AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2500+
1.83 GHz, 384 MB of RAM

I hope this is the info you needed. If there's something else, I can find stuff if you walk me through it. Some of this stuff is just Greek to me.
 
#10 ·
One more thing, I think I found that PSU label thing, it reads like this

Allied Model AL-A300-ATX
MAX 300W

Voltage 113/230 V
Current 8A/4A
Frequency
60/50 Hz

Also, I thought I might mention, there are two fans. One in the back of the tower and another on the motherboard, not sure if you need to know that or not.
 
#11 ·
My sincerest apologies on the colour, this old fart forgot they make Red ones too , now lol.Anyway, back to the problem at hand .the power supply isnt a problem at 300 watts ,although it isnt a BRILLIANT one , but the only problem I can see that comes to mind is the amount of ram you have.You obviously have a 256MB and a 128MBtogether , which is not really a lot.the more that you add on the harder the machine has to work and Ram plays a big part in this so you MAY need to buy more and replace what you have with a larger amount
 
#14 ·
So, you think that I need to buy more RAM, and that will keep my computer from locking when I plug something into the USB ports? I'm just making sure, because I just bought a 500 GB external hard drive, to move all my music & pics too. The hard drive on my CPU is partitioned into 3 drives, none of them are too full

The C drive:

29.2 GB, of which 13.8 GB is used

The D drive:
29.2 GB, of which 3.19 GB is used

The E drive:
15.9 GB, of which 10.2 GB is used

I guess I thought RAM was memory, and the above may have nothing to do with the RAM, but I just want to make sure that's what I need before I go spend more money. Thanks very much for your help.
 
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