external usb causing windows 10 to crash

Question

Sorry if this is in the wrong section but this seemed like the most relevant place to post it.

Iv'e got a 500GB external USB 3.0 that is causing my pc to crash upon being plugged in.

The process of what's happening is -

1) Plug the usb in 2) go to windows explorer and try to open the external drive to view the files 3) windows explorer freezes and locks up 4) windows displays a black screen until you restart the pc.

Things iv'e tried so far -

• Uninstalling the USB via the device manager and re-installing
• Scanning the device for any issues (none found)
• Removing and installing drivers from the manufacturers website
• Attempting to load the USB via EaseUS data recovery tool (Attempts to read the usb and then crashes)

Any ideas as to what else i can try ? The information on the usb is quite important and i would like to recover as much of it as possible.

Solution 1

This happened to me today. This solution will require you to have 3 available USB ports.

Not sure if it is your case, but it seemed to me that something odd was happening with Windows. It was unable to keep the USB stick (in my case) connected and kept crashing Explorer

What I did was to boot up a Linux through another USB stick (instructions here. No need to actually install Linux in your PC. Just in the stick) and open my possibly defective USB stick there.

It opened normally and I could then move the content from that stick to a third one just to be sure. When I get the time, I'll try to recover that defective one.

Keeping a Linux in the pocket has saved me many times when I needed to recover data from USB devices.

Edit: I realise this is an old question, but this might still be useful for others

Solution 2

This happened to me and I managed to solve it, though your situation could be different.

What happened was, I had not tried copying newly taken photos from my camera memory cards, via a USB flash-memory card reader, to my computer's drives, since several Windows 10 updates ago. During that time, Microsoft changed a policy or a behavior, such that certain USB devices that formerly had the "Optimize for Quick Removal" policy set and associated with the device's ID, lost that setting. But that alone was not enough to cause Windows Explorer crashes (and associated problems such as Adobe and other image-processing software hanging indefinitely upon attempting to access the USB card reader). The other step that made the problem show itself was some kind of minor change in Windows 10's Windows Explorer behavior -- specifically, that Explorer's defaults changed such that it automatically, by default, lists recently-accessed locations in the left sidebar up there in (I think) the Quick Access section. And in doing so, unfortunately, it also tries to scan some metadata about the contents of said locations (I'm not exactly clear on the details of this part, but the general idea is right). Finally, there's some kind of interaction between those two issues such that the USB device causes Explorer to hang.

So, the solution, in my case, was to safely shut down the computer, remove the USB device, access Windows Explorer settings (advanced section of them, I think) and turn off the default showing of recent files. Maybe I even turned off the Quick Access section, I forget. Having done so, I was then able to open Windows Explorer and plug in the USB device, and right-click it, go to Properties, and toggle the "Optimize for Quick Removal" property off and back on. This resulted in the device working properly, being accessible, and no longer causing problems.

Sadly the problem reoccurred after some more Windows 10 updates a month later, but I figure the default Windows Explorer behavior probably just got set again and I expect the same fix will work this time too.

Best of luck in your own case -- please report on what works.

Comments

[Admin]

Have you tried in any other machine?

[Admin]

tried it in another windows laptop and a mac, same as above on both of those as well

[Admin]

Boot into a minimal boot configuration. Verify the problem still exhibits itself, a minimal boot configuration means, only automatically starting the applications/services/drivers your PC need to function (network,display drivers, ect)/

[Admin]

Have you tried a legacy USB2.0 port?

[Admin]

How did you manage to scan your device with no errors if it crashes your PC? Or the system hangs only after Explorer tried to access the HDD?