Is USB killing my CPU?

Nibble

I've noticed a problem with my laptop that I had with one of my old desktops long ago -- whenever I have certain USB devices attached, my CPU jumps to 100% and the computer becomes a paper weight until I remove said device. I currently only use three USB devices: a camera, a Bluetooth adaptor, and an external hard drive (USB2.0). The camera seems to cause no problems; but the Bluetooth adaptor kills my CPU after a random interval of 5 minutes to one hour; and the HD does it any time I even click on a file, regardless of whether it's on my laptop or the external HD, but it returns to normal within a few minutes.

I'm currently trying to copy all my media files onto the external drive in preparation for a format, but it's transferring at around 400KB/s, or a third of USB1.1 speeds

Any idea what could be causing this? Is it a hardware problem, or do I have bad drivers?

ginguskahn

What OS are you running?

Nibble

Windows XP 32-bit, on an Athlon 64 3500+

UncleSporky

This isn't going to be an extremely helpful post but I wanted you to know that you aren't alone in this, and sometimes USB issues can be a huge bitch to fix. I've had several machines both at work and personally that just have weird problems when you plug certain USB devices into them. My main home computer, for one, will occasionally randomly blue screen and die, which over the years I have found is definitely due to my USB wireless card. I just can't be arsed to do anything about it.

Ego

USB is a finicky ass. I've lost track of the number of times that someone calls me because their system won't boot into windows and it's because some USB scanner or printer or even hard drive is plugged into the system while it's booting. Not that this is your problem, but just to give an example of random stupid hard to diagnose problems.

Only things to do (in my experience) are make sure you've got the right chipset drivers (or update your chipset drivers) for your motherboard, and check your BIOS settings for anything related to USB resource allocation.

Nibble

Yeah, now that you mention it, I once had a computer that would reset after posting every time if I had my USB mouse plugged in.

At least I know my external HD is fine, as I have used it on my desktop with no issues.

.kbf?

shot in the dark but you didn't happen to install an I-tunes update recently did you?

Nibble

Well apparently killing the explorer process and using xplorer2 lite solves the problem....