Hi, I'm hoping someone can help with this as I haven't found another example of this problem on the web. I'm using an AMD Athlon 64 (2GHz) desktop machine dating back to early 2005. My father bought a same-spec machine from the same people (forget who it was now) and had the same issues. The problem is with using USB mass storage devices of any kind, hard drives, pen drives, cameras, anything. I have a lot of headaches with files of certain kinds, mostly jpegs and mp3s but also movie files and just about anything large, although I say "large" without saying how large as the problem just isn't consistent, sometimes it flatly refuses to copy certain files then manages it on the xth attempt while some things will never work... and it doesn't seem to have much to do with file size as sometimes it'll transfer the contents of a folder but trip up on a tiny gif or something like that, and then (just now) I tried copying over a 900+MB Outlook Express backup file without any trouble. There seems to be little or no rhyme or reason over why some files are "allowed" and others aren't, but usually the same "problem" files will remain so on subsequent attempts, although sometimes if it's just an mp3 or a jpeg (preferably a small one) the computer will "relent" :dry: Most bizarre of all, I find if I hook up the same USB device to my Toshiba Satellite 2410 laptop (which appears to be USB1 only and doesn't give me any of these problems) I can WinZip the files and then my desktop doesn't mind these at all, for some reason WinZip files are cool with it That's just really annoying as I don't want to have to keep repeating that process for everything, especially with only a USB1 machine. I've been using W2KPro on my desktop and thought it may have been the combination of that and USB2 ports at the root of the problem, but upgraded to XP with SP2 today after a total format and it's exactly the same. I tried copying some camcorder video files onto my 8GB Kingston DataTraveler via the laptop, and while it got as far as opening the window and showing the contents, it hung momentarily and then refused (after some deliberation) to allow any transfers before spontaneously bottling out altogether and removing the drive. Worse still is my WD Elements 160GB drive which it refuses to even let me look at... if I plug it in it acknowledges the drive but then if I open My Computer to go to it it will hang before even drawing the contents of the window and will continue to go no further until I remove the drive, which once corrupted it and gave me no choice but to reformat. Trying to Safely Remove does no good, it's too tied up with itself to let me so I just have to restart - that's if it even lets me do that without hanging! The problem seems to be mainly with files as I can use my Genius tablet'n'pen with no problems... and also an old Epson Perfection 610 scanner, although that's caused a few crashes when I come to think about it. I'm wondering if it might be memory-related, maybe something to do with buffering, but I really don't know. It's a weird one and I've really no idea what could be happening here - the fact that WinZip archives seem to be the one thing it's okay all the time with (that's if I'm even allowed into the drive!) is weirdest of all. The severity of the behaviour seems to be proportional to the size of the drive but I'm not certain about this, it's too inconsistent to work out what the hell's going on. This is doing my head in Anyone had anything like this happen? Hoping someone can help Thanks!!
Seems to be a case of either 2 problems: 1. Faulty USB ports 2. The files you're trying to copy are secured (not permitted to copy)
Thanks! Definitely no problem with the files, they're generally ones created by myself anyway. Most probably faulty ports then (I have two at the front, two at the back). Strange that my dad's machine had the same problem - remembered now who we used as supplier, it was pcspecialist.co.uk
I seem to have found not a solution but at least a kind of workaround for the moment... keeping files in Zip archives rather than "normal" directories. It's early days yet, I've only done it with video files so far but my desktop doesn't seem to mind accessing things this way. Bizarre, hey? I keep wondering if it's something to do with memory caching and directories. It's not ideal and don't know how practical this will be in the long term but being able to at least access my files in some way is something.
