Shutdown & Startup issues..possibly driver related

Hi I have Vista x64 on an HP. I recently tried connecting a previously working external hard drive into my front USB port. I always put it in the top one and leave the bottom one for my Linkysys wireless internet card. One time, the external HD turned on and was obviously working but then it never showed up under My Computer, and I never got the Autoplay dialog either. So I tried safely removing it but it didn't show up in the safely remove box, so I just unplugged it. Then I plugged it back in. Same issue. So I restarted the computer, hoping it was just a one time thing. Here's where it gets weird.

When I chose the Shutdown option, Windows did its little thing and then it stayed on the Shutdown screen and was still on it several minutes later after I left the room and came back, so I was forced to use the power button. Upon restarting, it got past the HP logo screen then went to a black screen with a flashing white line (like a prompt) and it stayed that way for a long time. So I shut it off and tried again, then it was doing the same thing. Frustrated, I left the room and came back later to find out that my computer was running a Startup Repair, which checked for issues and then allegedly fixed them, then asked to do a system restore. So I let it do a restore and it seemed to work fine for a few days.

Then it started doing this thing where I have the external hard drive plugged in when I shut the computer down and then it locks up on the shutting down screen and I actually didn't realize that until the next morning when I saw that it was on the User log-in screen instead of OFF. So today I had the HD unplugged, I go to plug it in and it doesn't show up in My Computer AGAIN. I tried it again with no avail and restarted the computer. Guess what? Another locked up Shutdown screen. I left it to shut itself down for about 15 minutes, came back and it was still on, so I used the power button again. This time when it restarted, it went to that black screen with the prompt but never went to repair itself. I just had to continually restart it with the power button until finally I got an option to go into Safe Mode. Well I was going to try to defrag it and see if that helped. For some reason, defragmenter would not open. I went through the start icon, even tried a command prompt "defrag.exe -c" and I couldn't tell that it did anything. Restarted, this time it let me continue into Windows finally. So I tried defrag again and now it worked so I went ahead and ran it (by the way I hate how you don't see a progress bar or a report of your defrag in Vista. Is there a way to find one somewhere in the system?) I tried plugging in my USB device and it is now working, but I can't say for how long since I've run into this problem twice now. I have tried a different USB device in that same port and ran into the same issue with that so I think it has something to do with my front USB ports. I read that you can re-install drivers for those and if I actually select the uninstall option, it warns me that I'm about to uninstall the "device" and I wouldn't know how to get it back so I wanted to consult you guys before I did anything like that.

This is still a fairly new computer. I don't know what could be causing this. I got the latest Windows update at least a week ago. I run CCleaner fairly often, have AVG that runs every night before I shut the computer down, and even run Spybot S & D occasionally to check for spyware. What am I missing? Any help you guys could offer would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance. You fellas are awesome.

One thing I will mention before I give my advice is that Vista defrag's your hard drive weekly, but I am not sure about it "logging" the maintenance.

You can uninstall the driver completely first, but I would just go to the manufacturer's website to get any driver's and just update the driver. I'm not positive that will fix your problem.

Your problem is intermittent but seems to be effected by the same device and different devices. If the USB port is a consistent problem, it would lead me to believe that the port itself is faulty. Then again, your computer acting strange points more towards a software or driver problem of some sort.

When you say fairly new, about how old is it? Also, How much use has your top USB port seen in that time period?

Both of your problems seem to be related to the power plan settings on your PC. I have a link that explains how to change your power plan and/or create a custom plan http://support.microsoft.com/kb/935799 . Please make sure to select "change advanced power setting", then click on the "+" next to USB settings and change the "USB selective suspend setting" setting.

You can change the setting to "disabled" so that the USB connections will not be powered down.

It already says "Disabled" next to "Plugged In" for my USB Selective Suspend Setting" and it says Enabled next to "On Battery"

I have moved my external hard drive to the back of the computer and this has seemingly fixed the problem of it not being recognized. But the front ports will still work most of the time so they can't be faulty, right? Would it really fix the problem if I just deleted my drivers and let them re-install?

I have had to do the Startup Repair again, and it claims to use System Restore, which seemed to work before, but last night Windows required an update of a Windows x64 Malicious Code Removal Tool. It forced me to let it install it as it was powering down. Unfortunately though, when I woke up this morning, the computer was STILL ON, and the screen still said "Please do not turn off your computer. Installing update 1 of 1."

I will say though, that upon trying to safely remove my wireless internet adapter (which is still plugged in the front USB and usually works fine), I selected the adapter to remove it and then nothing happened. Left clicking on the Safely Remove Hardware no longer came up. Right-clicking brought me to the dialog box, but removing it on there didn't seem to make it go away either.

I tried running defragmenter again just to see if it was still messing up and it WAS. It doesn't open. I see dfrgui.exe in the task manager but nothing shows up, and I can't get rid of it by Ending the Process to try again.

And to answer your question, mariealabama, I bought this computer in January. It hasn't even been half a year.

Update: I noticed in my power settings that the system was set to go to Sleep mode after 15 minutes, and I've heard that Sleep mode can cause problems so I changed it to "Never". Then I experimented by letting my AVG run its nightly anti-virus all night and I just went to bed. This morning I turned on the monitor, told it to Shut Down and it shut right down.

So as far as the slow shutdown, could it be that sleep mode was the culprit? This still doesn't solve my USB issues but it's at least one problem taken care of (hopefully).

It sounds like you may have more than one problem going on with your system. I am not sure the USB issue is related to some of the other issues you are seeing.

Let's work on the USB issue first. Here is a knowledgebase article that addresses this specific issue:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927826 = A connected USB storage device does not appear when you click the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon in the notification area.

After you connect a USB storage device such as a flash drive to a computer that is running Windows, the device does not appear when you click the Safely Remove Hardware icon in the notification area. Therefore, you cannot prepare Windows for the removal of the USB device.

This problem occurs because of the way in which Windows handles devices that are connected to an embedded USB hub. If the Hub Descriptor component in an embedded USB hub reports downstream devices as non-removable, the Windows hub driver propagates the non-removable characteristics of these devices to the operating system.

The Safely Remove Hardware program in Windows does not display devices which are non-removable. This behaviour occurs because Windows determines that you cannot remove a non-removable device.

In the scenario that is described in this article, Windows determines that the embedded USB can be removed. However, Windows determines that the downstream storage device or devices that are connected to the embedded USB hub cannot be removed.

To work around this problem, shut down the computer before you remove the USB device.

To address the other issues, I would run a complete virus scan on the computer using an online scanner such as Windows Live One Care or Trend Micro Housecall. I would also run a spyware and malware scan.

If those are clear, you need to run a scan on the system files because of all the shutdown and startup issues you have seen:
To run the System File Checker tool, follow these steps:

Start >> run >> cmd >> At the command prompt, the following line, and then press ENTER:
sfc /scannow

Ok so just so I understand, if I connect a hard drive to the front USB ports and it doesn't show up in Safely Remove Hardware, then I should just make sure to shut down the computer while the device is still in the port. Is that right?

But is there any explanation as to why that same device won't provide an autoplay on the computer or even show up under My Computer with the other drives? I plug it in and it's like it's not even there. I can't get into it.

I will run the virus/spyware/malware/sfc when I get home today. Thanks Doc.

Mini-Update: Downloaded and ran Malwarebyte's Anti-Malware and found "Hijack.DisplayProperties. I removed it and ran the scan again and found nothing the second time. I can't find much info about it though on the web.

Ok so as I said, I ran Malwarebytes anti-malware and found Hijack.Display Properties and deleted it. Spybot S&D found nothing. AVG found nothing. Trend Micro took a very long time to work. I had to leave it running all night, but it said it didn't find anything this morning. Windows Live One Care Online Scanner does not work for me. I used IE to do it since it has trouble in Firefox. I ran it all night and came back to it and the scanner window was completely blank. So I don't know if it even finished.

I ran sfc and read through the log file. It seems there is a problem related to my Windows Sidebar but I thought I'd post the log so everyone can see it and hopefully someone can help me fix this once and for all. Unfortunately though the log is way too big to fit in this post and might even take 3. What should I do? Someone please help. I'm so close to just reformatting the whole stupid thing.

Also, I don't know if this will help but this morning when I shut it down, I walked away from it and came back to a BSOD that only lasted for a second or two so all I could read from it was "Driver Power State Failure". I hope that is helpful to solving my issues

Last edited by staghound406 on 26th May 2009, 2:38 pm; edited 1 time in total (Reason for editing : small update. didn't want to add another post)

Did everyone forget about me?...

Well after various searching, I found that I needed video card driver updates. I also downloaded Service Pack 2. And I ran numerous virus and malware scans and the system appears to be clean.

I also found out that Vista has a bug in its safely remove hardware operation.

"This problem occurs because of a timing issue in which allocated memory may be released while the system is removing the selected device. When this behavior occurs, the system can no longer find the information about the selected device. Therefore, the device is not removed."

There is a hotfix that Microsoft released for it, but they claim that it is included in SP2. But the bug is caused when you use the left click method on Safely Remove Hardware. Here is Microsoft's suggestion to avoid the problem:

To work around this problem, use one of the following methods:

* Double-click the Safely Remove Hardware icon in the notification area, click the device, and then click Stop.
* Right-click the Safely Remove Hardware icon in the notification area, click Safely Remove Hardware, click the device, and then click Stop.

These problems in my system have seemingly been resolved for now. I hope my info here can help someone in the future.

The other night I tried removing the wireless internet adapter using the Safely Remove Hardware dialog and clicking "stop" and I got the Vista version of an hourglass icon (the swirling blue circle) and it never went away. The device remained unremoved. Upon trying to restart, Windows once again locked up during the shutting down screen.

This problem is apparently still around