BleepingComputer.com: Strange Problems

Strange issues here:

Everything worked fine this morning.

I was working with files on a USB flash drive and when I finished, I clicked the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon in the System Tray, selected the device and clicked STOP. The computer stopped responding and I never got a message that I could safely remove the device.

I then used CTRL/ALT/DELETE and ended the process.

I then rebooted the computer....which took a lot longer to shut down, but I didn't think anything of it. Maybe, when I stopped the ejection of the flash drive the computer was catching up on some cache-ing or something.

Now, when I plug-in my USB drive, it doesn't detect it right away. It doesn't show up as a drive in My Computer. After about a minute or to I get the little "chord sound" that it was connected, however, it's supposed to automatically open an Explorer window to show the files but it never does (it did before).

I've tried different flash drives and the same issue. I even tried different USB ports, same problem.

I do not get any error messages and I can access, open the files no problem.

Another issue----when I select Windows update, the Window pops up but it's blank, like it's searching for something. After about a minute, I get a red bar that says I need to check for updates on my computer.

When I do this, the window stops responding. After about a minute or so, I get the following error:

Windows could not search for new updates. Code: 8007041D Windows Update encountered an unknown error.

In summary

- USB flash drives take a long time to be detected by Windows
- Windows Update does not function properly

I'm not sure if these are related.

The Event Viewer shows these error on more than one occasion:

Level Date and Time Source Event ID Task Category
Error 1/28/2009 9:17:40 PM Service Control Manager 7011 None A timeout (30000 milliseconds) was reached while waiting for a transaction response from the wuauserv service.

Level Date and Time Source Event ID Task Category
Error 1/28/2009 9:17:10 PM Service Control Manager 7000 None "The Windows Update service failed to start due to the following error:
The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion."

Level Date and Time Source Event ID Task Category
Error 1/28/2009 8:45:24 PM Service Control Manager 7011 None A timeout (30000 milliseconds) was reached while waiting for a transaction response from the ShellHWDetection service.

I'm stumped on this one...any ideas??

DId you try an online scan to see if something has slipped by your current protection? http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/blogs/usas...?showentry=1252

Probably the best way to go beyond that is to locate the Windows Update log file and see what error it gives. This will help to figure if it's a Windows problem or a Windows Update issue.

Have you checked in Device Manager to see what the USB ports are doing when you plug in a USB device?

I think I found the culprit.
Before all of this happened, I received a notice from Windows Update to Install "Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 3" (or something similar). Since it applied for my system I didn't see any harm in proceeding with the update.

I did a system restore using the Vista DVD just before the update and my system is back to normal and everything functions again. Something must have jolted some timing settings.

I proceeded later to do exactly what I did before but this time did not install SQL. I simply hid the update.

I have not had a problem since.

Glad to hear that you isolated the issue - and thanks for letting us know!

Let's put that one on the backburner....

The Windows Update problem does appear to be fixed, but sometimes it takes a few minutes to recognize any USB devices being plugged in.

A little more detail on this issue:

- I have Autoplay turned ON for all drives including USB
- when I plug in a USB device, I get the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon in the System tray but the device does not show up in "My Computer" and I cannot access the device.
- after about a minute or two, it finally shows up, silently.
- I have no problem accessing the files or using the device and the computer appears to operate normally.
- it doesn't matter which USB ports I plug into, the issue can occur on any port
- when I try to remove the device, it removes immediately after I select it in Safely Remove Hardware, but there is no sound when the dialog box pops up saying it is safe to remove. When I didn't have problems, there was always a ding sound.
- when I have the problem, the "two-chord" sound doesn't happen until about a minute after I eject the device.

And here's another connection to the problem:

- when this problem occurs and I reboot or shutdown the system, it appears to hang at the "Shutting Down" screen (for up to 4 minutes) before finally shutting down.

This problem is intermittent and doesn't always occur. Rebooting seems to solve the problem.

I've noticed another pattern. When my wife is logged on and then she Logs off of her account and I logon to mine is when I usually get the problem.

This started to occur about 2 weeks ago. Things that I have done:

1) Installed MS SQL Express Server 2005 SP3 from Windows Update.
2) Installed GPS Software TomTom.
3) Installed Net Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 from Windows Update.
4) Installed Office Live Add-in.
5) Did a patch update on Spy Sweeper 6 to the next build.

After doing 1) I did a system restore as described in previous post to fix the Windows Update issue. I then re-did each step 1) through 5) but didn't notice the problem re-curring. As I said, it only happens occasionally, but almost always after logging off from one account and then logging on to another.

The event viewer doesn't show anything unusual.

Finally, here are my specs:

Motherboard - Dell DM051
BIOS Version - A07
Chipset - Intel Express 945G (Northbridge - Lakeport-G i945G) (SouthBridge: Intel 82801GB ICH7)
RAM - DDR2 2.0 GB

Any ideas?