I'm going to go insaneeeeee!! First, the chirp chirp noises from the PC case, then the hard drive clunk clunk noises and now this windows *freezing* problem! 
Also, window explorer's physical mem usage stays at ~110MB and virtual mem usage at ~100MB with the CPU usage at 51% (well CPU shows 87% total) just from copying files from your PC across to the USB drive.
Mind you I have a P4-2.8GHz Northwood CPU.
I have also taken a screen capture of the windows task manager for those that are curious to see
This is what i had to do to reproduce the problem:
1. Select the "3D Flying Objects" screen saver in WinXP. Set it to like 1 min so you can save time to reproduce
2. connect an external USB 2.0 drive to your PC. (I connected mine to the USB 2.0 PCI card since the built-in 2.0 USB ports on the mobo do not work at 2.0 speeds )
3. After detecting your drive, blah blah, try copying large files over to the USB drive so it will take *longer* than 1 minute to copy across. Note: copying files from USB to the PC works just as well)
4. Now, wait for the screen saver to kick in while the files are being copied. Wait for a few seconds more (5-6 seconds) and hopefully your PC will freeze. 8)
5. The only way to get out of this mess is to hit the "reset" key on the PC.
My system specs:
P4-2.8GHz Northwood CPU.
Gigabyte GA-8I848P-L motherboard (Intel I848 chipset)
ATi Radeon 9600Pro with Cat 4.6 drivers.
512MB PC3200 DDR RAM
80GB Seagate H.D.
Windows XP with SP1 & all critical hotfixes.
Belkin USB 2.0 PCI card (NEC chipset)
Note: I have tried using a *different* screensaver and cannot reproduce the problem. Also, if you dont use a USB HD to copy files over, the PC will NOT freeze. Very odd... Sometimes if I try canceling it while its copying, the explorer.exe mem usage and cpu usage stays very high!!
This sort of problem happens at work as well. Even though we thoroughly test our apps with automated test scripts, all i have to do is just use someone else's app (that was fully tested btw) and I hit a serious bug that no one has heard of :?
Anyways, I really want to get to the bottom of this. That is, what exactly is causing this problem. Is it the WinXP USB drivers? Or explorer.exe? Or the motherboard's BIOS? Or ATi video drivers? Or the Intel mobo chipset drivers?
Can someone please try this out for me and see it you can reproduce it on your PCs as well. Maybe its related to specific USB drives or motherboards or drivers.
Also, window explorer's physical mem usage stays at ~110MB and virtual mem usage at ~100MB with the CPU usage at 51% (well CPU shows 87% total) just from copying files from your PC across to the USB drive.
Mind you I have a P4-2.8GHz Northwood CPU.
I have also taken a screen capture of the windows task manager for those that are curious to see
This is what i had to do to reproduce the problem:
1. Select the "3D Flying Objects" screen saver in WinXP. Set it to like 1 min so you can save time to reproduce
2. connect an external USB 2.0 drive to your PC. (I connected mine to the USB 2.0 PCI card since the built-in 2.0 USB ports on the mobo do not work at 2.0 speeds
)3. After detecting your drive, blah blah, try copying large files over to the USB drive so it will take *longer* than 1 minute to copy across. Note: copying files from USB to the PC works just as well)
4. Now, wait for the screen saver to kick in while the files are being copied. Wait for a few seconds more (5-6 seconds) and hopefully your PC will freeze.
8) 5. The only way to get out of this mess is to hit the "reset" key on the PC.
My system specs:
P4-2.8GHz Northwood CPU.
Gigabyte GA-8I848P-L motherboard (Intel I848 chipset)
ATi Radeon 9600Pro with Cat 4.6 drivers.
512MB PC3200 DDR RAM
80GB Seagate H.D.
Windows XP with SP1 & all critical hotfixes.
Belkin USB 2.0 PCI card (NEC chipset)
Note: I have tried using a *different* screensaver and cannot reproduce the problem. Also, if you dont use a USB HD to copy files over, the PC will NOT freeze. Very odd... Sometimes if I try canceling it while its copying, the explorer.exe mem usage and cpu usage stays very high!!
This sort of problem happens at work as well. Even though we thoroughly test our apps with automated test scripts, all i have to do is just use someone else's app (that was fully tested btw) and I hit a serious bug that no one has heard of :?
Anyways, I really want to get to the bottom of this. That is, what exactly is causing this problem. Is it the WinXP USB drivers? Or explorer.exe? Or the motherboard's BIOS? Or ATi video drivers? Or the Intel mobo chipset drivers?
Can someone please try this out for me and see it you can reproduce it on your PCs as well. Maybe its related to specific USB drives or motherboards or drivers.
