Windows crashes

[Pammachio]

I all,
I have a problem on my Windows Vista that began afetr the purchase of an external Hard Disk Freecom.
A few days afetr the purchase I disconnected it while it was writing and, since that moment, every time I connect and disconnect it, the PC go to freeze mode for 5 minutes.
The same thing happen even if the hard disk is disconnected: every time I start windows it go to freeze a little after the password, and every time I connect and disconnect a usb device.
I have looked for the solution everywhere, updated windows, unistalled and installed the hard disk from the device manager but I solved the problem only when I restored a recent backup.
Yesterday the Hard disk was writing a backup while Vista was installing the updates; at the end of the proceure windows restarted automatically and the problem began again!!!
The Pc go to freeze when it starts, every time I connect or disconnect the hard disk, an usb earphone that has always worked switch on but there is no audio and I don't know how many others usb devices will have problems.
Has anyone an idea to solve this problem before I throw out of the window Vista or the the hard disk?
Thank you


__________________
Never seen gift ideas for confirmation like these! (geschenke zum on german or regalos on espanol), scuola

[Forseti]

Here's something you might want to try. Click on the 'Safely Remove Hardware' radio button with no devices connected. You should see an option of 'Safely Remove USB Mass Storage Devices' followed by the drive letters that Windows allocates to the USB ports. Now delete these drives and shut down your computer. Upon restart Windows will, as these USB ports are hard fixed to your PC, reinstall the necessary drivers from the OS. Once restarted, either check by double-clicking on 'My Computer' or the safely remove hardware button again to check that these USB drives are showing once more.

Now check to see that Windows behaves itself when USB devices other than the Freecom drive are connected - if so then the problem has been isolated to that particular device. It may be that this drive needs to be reformatted.

One other recommendation - don't have devices connected that are not essential, and others such as printers etc leave switched off during updates. I would also configure updates to advise that they are available but not to install automatically. I personally don't have any external drives etc connected to my PC when online as this leaves open the risk to a virus also infecting that drive if one is unlucky.

[OldBoy]

You can only delete USB devices from device manager. In the option Forseti suggest you have a stop button, so select the device that shows the Freecom drive and click the stop button, and with a bit of luck, when you unplug the Freecom drive's USB cable and reconnect it should now work OK. If it doesn't, then you need to go into Device Manager and delete the USB connection for this drive and reboot the PC.

As regards updates for Vista, you have the option to tell Vista to only install updates after you close the computer down. This will stop it installing the updates and rebooting the computer. To select the option you want go to Control Panel and click on Security Centre, then click on Windows Update and set as required.