[geeks] USB and Windows 7 crashes...

[Shannon]

I have discovered a strange problem and thought to run it by you guys.

For a long time, my mother's computer would lock up in a way that so far has
defied debugging. The machine hangs, and the screen becomes corrupted. The
screen almost looks like an old school TV which has lost signal.

Because Windows was totally hung and you couldn't see enough of the screen to
look at it for information, it remained a mystery.

I can't babysit my mother's machine so I was almost at the point of telling
her to buy another or let me build one.

I decided to go and try one more time to debug the machine and she told me
that it had been getting steadily worse. While there I also noticed that it
hung on the BIOS screen for a long time. Just out of habit, I unplugged every
USB device that wasn't needed, and when I unplugged the printer (HP 2015) the
BIOS screen progressed.

Hmmmm... reboot with printer disconnected, machine boots up quick. Reboot with
printer connected, machine hangs a bit, and then boots slowly.

So, I told her to leave the printer disconnected for a week or so. During that
time Windows has not crashed once.

Any ideas why the printer could trigger that behavior?


--
"Where some they sell their dreams for small desires."