Laptop's USB port getting squirrelly
I have a Dell laptop that is 4 years old. The USB ports have always responded quickly in the past, but for the past month, it has taken up to 3 or 4 minutes to recognize a USB drive. I thought, at fir...
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The chips that run the USB ports do go bad. And the way they go bad causes an error bit to be sent to the CPU. The CPU recognizes that the fault isn't enough to cause a full system shutdown that was so popular in the past (blue screen of death) so it just shuts down the port, goes about it's business, comes back sometime (milliseconds) later and checks the port manager again. Keeps doing this forever.
The OTHER, more likely reason, is that the Laptop hasn't been thoroughly cleaned in quite a while and it's choked with dust. This causes heat to build up and many custom chips have auto shutdown due to overheating. The USB management chip could be one of them that's overheating, sending a 'paused' signal to the CPU.
So open the case and clean out all the dust, pay particular attention to the heat sinks and fan.
That's the likely hardware reasons. Software reasons occur as well.
The OTHER, more likely reason, is that the Laptop hasn't been thoroughly cleaned in quite a while and it's choked with dust. This causes heat to build up and many custom chips have auto shutdown due to overheating. The USB management chip could be one of them that's overheating, sending a 'paused' signal to the CPU.
So open the case and clean out all the dust, pay particular attention to the heat sinks and fan.
That's the likely hardware reasons. Software reasons occur as well.
