Background:

Desktop - Dell
OS - XP Pro
HD Capacity - 80g (61g avail)
RAM - 1g
External Devices - Lexmark printer


Issue:

When I attempt to add an external device to my Desktops USB ports, the PC indicates it recognizes the device being added (Camera, Portable HD) and then hard boots itself. The PC will come back up and indicate it had recovered from a "serious problem" and works without issue. Plug in external device... hard boot. I have tried different USB ports and get the same results. I also tried adding the device while the PC was off to see if adding it this way would result in better behaviors... it did not.

I can eventually get the device to work, but after how many hardboots which isn't the best thing for my PC.

Any feedback is appreciated.

Thanks.

Boot to your XP CD and run the repair option. Sounds like the USB drivers may be corrupted.

Did the external drive come with any software? Do you have all your xp windows up to date with MS updates?

Thanks for your responses.

I went in and changed the boot seq to CD-ROM 1st and booted from the XP CD. When I selected the "R" Recovery Console, I was presented with a comand prompt with what appeared to be an option 1 - Windows. I initially selected Enter and the boot took place and the PC came online. I then tried this again using entering 1 in the Recovery Console screen and an ADMIN password is requested. I do not know what this password would be? I am the ADMIN account for the PC and that does not work...

I looked for updated drivers via the Device Manager and did update each USB port listed in the USB Tree. Updated drivers did get loaded... I then booted the PC and tried to add my external HD (IOMEGA - no software - Plug & Play only) and the PC hard booted. I then uninstalled the all allowable USB ports listed in the tree and allowed the driver cache to re-install when Windows came back up. This produced some progress, as I can now add the external HD without a Hard Boot... BUT only once. Once the device has been added, should I remove it and add it back the PC will hardboot again. I am utlizing the safe removal protocol by selecting remove hardware icon in the task bar.

I am utlizing the safe removal protocol by selecting remove hardware icon in the task bar

I would continue doing this if all is working all right and no problems present itself.

Well that only worked for a little bit of time and then the issue resurfaced... I backed up my critical files, formated and reloaded my OS. (Win XP Pro). This corrected the issue... However the version of XP I have was based on SP1... Many updates and SP2 later, I am back up to speed. :D