# computer freezing



## newfieannie (Dec 24, 2006)

i get a message saying one of the USB devices on your computer has malfunctioned and the computer doesn't recognize it. click this message but by that time I can't click on anything. do I have to take it to the shop or can I do something myself Thanks! ~Georgia


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## backwoodsman7 (Mar 22, 2007)

Can't say anything specific with so little info, but I'd suggest unplugging the problem device and trying it in a different USB port, and/or a different computer.

If you need more help than that, you'll need to tell us what your operating system is, what the device is, and exactly what the error message is.


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

newfieannie said:


> i get a message saying one of the USB devices on your computer has malfunctioned and the computer doesn't recognize it. click this message but by that time I can't click on anything. do I have to take it to the shop or can I do something myself Thanks! ~Georgia


First, try reinstalling the USB driver. Do the following:

1. Hold down the Windows key and press the "r" key.
2. Paste "devmgmt.msc" (less quotes) in the search box and press Enter to open the device manager
3. At the bottom of the device manager, select "Universal Serial Bus controllers" and press the Delete key to remove it. I'm not sure, you may need to delete them individually. Either way, delete all of the USB controllers.
4. Power down your computer.
5. Remove the power adapter and battery and wait a few minutes, then hold down the power button for 20 seconds or so at assure that the computer is unpowered.
6. Replace the battery & power plug and power on the machine. USB drivers will automatically reinstall as the computer starts.

If that doesn't fix it you can try a system restore. This is somewhat advanced so if you aren't sure of what you're doing ask before taking the leap.

Start-->Settings-->Update & Security-->Recovery

If that still doesn't fix it, I think you'll have to conclude that you have a hardware problem. If the computer is somewhat dated you might consider replacing it. That might actually cost less than repair.


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## 4tu (Jul 24, 2018)

a Windows improper shutdown probably corrupted the driver file, remove the device you think is the offender and as stated try another usb port.

If that does not fix it, the usb flash drive or component may be having a problem, or if it requires a driver for that particular device you may need to remove it and reinstall the driver for that device to get it to work.

Do you have a wireless mouse and or keyboard if they work then it's the device pull it out. if it is a flash drive it may need to be formatted (you will lose all data on it) 
Check If your printer works if it's on usb if it does, it's not the usb drivers (software) 

If the printer nor other attached usb hardware works then remove all usb devices including printer. Go into settings devices and usb and right click and remove the usb ports , restart the computer it should find "new" devices "usb" and install them again this should fix the issue.

Windows is suppose to find the newest driver for your hardware from windows 8 and up it dumps the old driver and reinstalls the newer or original driver that is suppose to be original uncorrupted on the windows backup / installation files-- all this is presuming that windows does not have malware a virus or a bad port, bad device. or corrupted installation files.

I gave up on Windows years ago, it does it's own thing your not the boss of it, it updates as it chooses many times it alters user changes back to original settings backups and copying installation to a DVD is hit and miss when you need it and insert the DVD it may or may not see it or can use iit's always something. to me it's nagware and when it's updating it cannot be in use and then you have to restart if a real pain and it's a snitch they sell the code so large operations can see where you have been what your interested in and searches you may as well be walking the street naked.


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## newfieannie (Dec 24, 2006)

working on it Nevada


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## newfieannie (Dec 24, 2006)

I got through most of the steps Nevada. I guess a power pk is that power bar on the floor with everything plugged in. couldn't find any battery. didn't know there was one. I shut her down at that point and after a bit started her up. I'm still here so maybe it worked anyway. we'll see. ~Georgia


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

newfieannie said:


> I got through most of the steps Nevada. I guess a power pk is that power bar on the floor with everything plugged in. couldn't find any battery. didn't know there was one. I shut her down at that point and after a bit started her up. I'm still here so maybe it worked anyway. we'll see. ~Georgia


Hopefully reinstalling the USB driver did it.


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## HermitJohn (May 10, 2002)

Failed stick RAM can cause all kinds weird problems, freezing and crashing among them. I have one older Vista era laptop that got flaky. Had 4GB RAM, I removed one stick (apparently a bad one) and problems cleared up and it runs faster. Though I think processor heatsink needs to be reseated with fresh thermal grease as it tends to run bit hot, but fan working and air passage open/clean. Overheating can cause problems too.

One simple thing, you can first try removing your sticks of RAM and reseating/reinstalling them. Next trick, try removing one stick RAM. If no change replace it and remove the other. No cost just bit time.


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## newfieannie (Dec 24, 2006)

you're forgetting HJ. I'm the clueless person here. I need instructions for dummies and then some. I don't even know what a ram is except when having to do with sheep.

in any case I was able to follow Nevada's instructions this time except for the battery part and it hasn't frozen since whereas before it would freeze every 15 min or so. I'm keeping my fingers crossed the problem has been solved. ~Georgia


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

newfieannie said:


> in any case I was able to follow Nevada's instructions this time except for the battery part


Oh, I was assuming you had a laptop computer. Evidently that's not the case.


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## newfieannie (Dec 24, 2006)

no, all I have is the one I've had for 15 years. I'm thinking of getting a laptop. I was away for a couple of weeks and was wishing I had one. the people I stayed with go to bed at 9 and I was bored stiff. just got to figure out what to buy. ~Georgia


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## HermitJohn (May 10, 2002)

This is what a stick RAM looks like: 



Yours maybe longer, fatter, shorter, skinnier, etc depending on age of your computer, but basically they all resemble those two in the picture. They fit in slots on your motherboard.


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## HermitJohn (May 10, 2002)

newfieannie said:


> no, all I have is the one I've had for 15 years. I'm thinking of getting a laptop. I was away for a couple of weeks and was wishing I had one. the people I stayed with go to bed at 9 and I was bored stiff. just got to figure out what to buy. ~Georgia


read the cheap computer thread. The best bang for the buck with good longevity is retired business laptop with i5 or i7 processor. You can find them as low as $50 minus operating system, hard drive, and power adapter. Figure on replacing battery too. At this price only guaranteed to boot into bios. But that lets you know screen works, etc. Though if you want cheaper, the old core2duo and Turion64 laptops still pretty good. Or you can spend upto $200 on one refurbished, though any long term guarantee would be dependent on longevity of seller and how honest they are. I personally recommend either Dell Latitude or HP Elitebook or Lenovo Thinkpad. Those are pretty bulletproof. But of course other good ones.

What you really, really want to stay away from is the low end plastic laptops with celeron and a 32GB eMMC drive soldered to motherboard, not upgradeable. This isnt even big enough for win10 with all its updates!!!!! The idea of these is to force you to rent space "in the cloud". Sort of Microsoft's answer to the Chromebook. Sucks if you have slow connection or metered data connection. They generally have either 2GB RAM or 4GB RAM and not replaceable, not upgradeable. There are workarounds to the limited eMMC drive, you can use external usb SSD. Either linux or there is a free wintousb software that can move win10 to the external SSD and it will boot that way. Microsoft only allows this natively on professional versions of win10. This is a third party workaround that lets you do it on home version of win10. Win10 installed like this is wee bit slower booting, but you wont notice a difference in how it runs. And doing it this way you can buy an SSD any size you want.

Anyway for these low end celeron laptops they want as much or more than good refurb Latitude or Elitebook. The only advantage to the low end celeron laptops is that they can be had in very small size and they go long time on a battery charge. Very light weight too. Think tablet outfitted as a laptop. But the companies selling them tend not to support them very well, with intention for them to have a very short lifespan. A high end business laptop in comparison can last 20 years.


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

newfieannie said:


> no, all I have is the one I've had for 15 years. I'm thinking of getting a laptop. I was away for a couple of weeks and was wishing I had one. the people I stayed with go to bed at 9 and I was bored stiff. just got to figure out what to buy. ~Georgia


The used laptop market isn't what it used to be, as HermitJohn has pointed out. That's because a lot of former laptop owners used their computers for little more than FaceBook. Many of them have gone to tablets, and some have even found that their smartphones allow then to do what they need. However, businesses still need laptops as much as they've always needed them, and that's where your opportunity lies. Look for used, off-lease HP business class laptops.

If you're looking to replace a desktop then you'll probably want more than a standard 14-inch monitor laptop. While a 15.6" monitor doesn't sound like a lot more, it will make a much better replacement for a desktop. There are 17" monitors available but they sell at a high premium. Stay with a 15.6" model.

You'll probably find maximum economy with the second generation i5 & i7 processor laptops. For HP business class laptops look for the HP 6560b and HP 8560p laptops. I usually pick them up at eBay in the $50 to $75 range. I'll install a used SSD drive for about $40, a battery for $13, and an AC adapter for $7. You should be fine with 4GB of RAM (memory), which is inexpensive. When you're ready to look at purchasing a new laptop post back for current market conditions.


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## HermitJohn (May 10, 2002)

Also when my desktop went to desktop heaven, I mounted an old laptop to wall and hooked desktop monitor, desktop keyboard and mouse, to it. Works fine. Well one went to laptop heaven, I turned it off, there was a big lightening storm. It never turned on again, completely dead. I am still not sure how the lightening got to it since the laptop brick should protected from power surge and its wifi connection to hotspot and the desktop monitor plugged into it was fine.. But I assume thats what happened, too much coincidence otherwise. Using an old Dell Latitude 131L now. Has a Turion64 processor and 2GB RAM, plenty fast enough for Puppy Linux. And yes I added a command at startup to automatically turn off the laptop screen. Just saying if you get a deal on small laptop, its small for travel, but you can plug in a large desktop monitor when using it as a desktop. Best of both worlds.

I personally dont get popularity of tablets and smart phones. I hate trying to do stuff on tiny screens. I also have no problem with a desktop computer, just there isnt much of a deal on one. They are either ancient or expensive gaming machines, or they are these NUC things that are basically same hardware as the mini entry level laptops only minus the screen. And they tend to want MORE money than they do for the mini laptops.

I do suspect we are moving to where people use their cell phone for everything. Have a docking station to use it as a work station computer.


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

HermitJohn said:


> Have a docking station to use it as a work station computer.


That's another nice feature of HP business laptops. You can usually find docking stations for around $15. But I just use my laptop without a docking station.


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## HermitJohn (May 10, 2002)

Probably information not of any use to anybody, but was thinking of Nevada's dislike of small screen laptops in his post above. And I agree the cheapie plastic tablets and mini laptops dont have a screen suited well for older eyes. Their keyboards and touchpads dont tend to be pleasant either. Well some years back HP made an Elitebook tablet. 




2730p = core2duo
2740p = first generation core i5
2760p = second generation core i5 or i7

Anyway they were like $1600 new and super high quality. 12 inch screen. Much heavier than current tablets. But an easier to look at small screen you wont find, and very comfortable keyboard. They put some serious effort into engineering these machines. They were a stylus touchscreen which apparently worked well, though I only ever tried one as normal laptop. I just never had any use for a touchscreen. Like say amazingly comfortable to use as a small laptop. Now they had a complicated single swivel hinge to accommodate tablet only use as the halves dont separate like modern tablet laptops, and betting that would be something to notice as these have some age on them at this point. Hinges loosen up on laptops over time. And you would probably want the 2760p version if using windows. I think it came with either win7 or win8 though imagine many upped to win10 when M$ was pushing such auto updates. I think there still is backdoor way of getting official free win10 update on win7 and win8 computers if you want it. No doubt work nicely as laptop with linux, not sure how well the touchscreen stuff would work if thats important to you. Probably work ok, might need some tweaking for the touchscreen to work well. Anyway anymore these are $20 to $50 used probably missing hard drive and AC adapter, thus coming with no operating system at that price either, though you would want SSD instead of hard drive anyway. Upgrading to SSD really makes difference on older computers. They will have COA for original version windows on back if you want windows. Can download restoration windows free on Microsoft website or get dvd version of windows on ebay for few bucks minus activation code, and use the COA for older windows. If its ever had win10 on it, then win10 would activate automatically when you went online with it. Or you can run win10 unactivated indefinitely. Or linux for free of course. Even the older 2730p would do fine with something like Xenialpup64.


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## 4tu (Jul 24, 2018)

I had a notebook give to me that had a bad screen put on a wireless mouse and keyboard and hooked it up to a 19 inch monitor ran just fine it turned into a desktop with DVD and wireless bluetooth and at that time USB 2.0 and a 320GB hard drive. 

Back in the day I would just screw all the parts to a piece of plywood made it easier to copy drives with IDE connectors, and it made a great text bench for components.


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## HermitJohn (May 10, 2002)

Probably should add this to cheap laptop thread. But I recently picked up a $20 Fujitsu Lifebook T4215. This is old, sticker says it actually came with XP, but with core2duo 1.85GHz and 4GB RAM. In other words it could run win10, though not sure why you would want to do that to it. I had never played with a Fujitsu before. This particular T version is a tablet designed much like the HP Elitebook Tablets I mentioned earlier, maybe not quite as nice of a finish on it, the paint on lid for example had peeled. But otherwise pretty good. I connected a SSD with StretchDog64 (this is small Puppy-ized version of Debian 9 "Stretch" linux and not an official Puppy release). This has been fairly impressive for such an old laptop. I then got to looking at Fujitsu laptops on ebay. Finding some partially stripped ones and occasional damaged screen, but not finding dead ones which is unusual and good sign of how they hold up. This is a small brand and not well known, but these seem pretty robust laptops. Because they are robust, seeing lot OLDER ones refurbished. I even saw some really old single core pentium M Fujitsus being sold refurbished. And at price you could get a much more powerful laptop, thats just trolling for suckers and wanting to take advantage of somebody. M-processor was good and reliable in its day, but its pretty marginal now. Need to pay very close attention to specs on these, you dont want to pay 4th generation i5 price for a core2duo laptop and especially not for a pentium M laptop. I even saw one P3 Fujitsu with win98 on it. 

By way I much prefer this ancient T4215 I played with, to modern "cloudbook/netbook" plastic laptops. Not much heavier. This is 12 inch screen, but so much easier to look at than the cheapie type screens. The older core2duo like this one is approximately equivalent to the entry level celeron processors of today.


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## mnn2501 (Apr 2, 2008)

HJ, did you miss the below? There's very little chance they understand 1/2 of what you posted.



newfieannie said:


> you're forgetting HJ. I'm the clueless person here. I need instructions for dummies and then some.


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## HermitJohn (May 10, 2002)

mnn2501 said:


> HJ, did you miss the below? There's very little chance they understand 1/2 of what you posted.


I guess you missed my disclaimer that I have had for years and years....



> "Well, then ignore what I have to say and go with what works for you." -Eliot Coleman


I am sure most people that dont understand something either ask, research, or ignore suggestions. And more power to them. Have to say the less you know, the more you pay, that tends to be a universal truth too. Also something about there being a tradeoff of time and money. Have lot money and little time, buy a new one, will be most effective use of time and resources. Have little money and lot of time, figure out how to fix what you got or a cheap replacement that maybe easier or more practical to fix. Or learn to live without.


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## newfieannie (Dec 24, 2006)

well I may not understand every thing HJ says (you might need to be an Einstein for that) but I've learned a lot from him over the years healthwise etc. etc.and I find him very interesting and informative and never miss any of his posts no matter what it's about. ~Georgia


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