Plug & Play Error causing Windows hard locks?

[Sumanji]

Hey,

I'm running a Dell Mini 9 with a moderately nLite'd version of Windows XP Pro SP3 (with all latest updates). I keep getting intermittent hard locks when an SD card is present in the JMicron JMB38X card reader (verified by running the PC for 24 hours with no card, and 12 hours Memtest86+ to exclude faulty RAM).

Looking through the Event Viewer, I see lots of these errors like the one below - full pics of the errors are here: 1, 2, 3

EDIT - apparently this is "normal" power-saving behaviour according to JMicron support. When these errors occur the entries for the card reader in Device manager disappear (when there is no card present).

HOWEVER, the hard locks are definitely related to the presence of my SD card in the reader... will need to experiment with different cards to work out which of the two is the problem I guess!

Cheers,

Suman

[Singh400]

It's probably something you removed when you nlited the install. Only way to find out would be to install the proper version of XP and see if you get the same errors.

[Spleen]

things to try would be:

Assign the card a different device letter, via manage by right clicking on my computer. I've seen locks ups when the card gets assigned a drive letter that was previously in use by other media (usb hard drive or mem stick)

If still issues then get the latest driver from manufacture's website.

If all else fails see



http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310575

Remove and reinstall all USB controllers
To remove and reinstall all USB controllers, follow these steps:
Click Start, click Run, type sysdm.cpl in the Open box, and then click OK.
Click the Hardware tab.
Click the Device Manager button.
Expand Universal Serial Bus controllers.
Right-click every device under the Universal Serial Bus controllers node, and then click Uninstall to remove them one at a time.
Restart the computer, and then reinstall the USB controllers.
Plug in the removable USB storage device, and then test to make sure that the issue is resolved.

[Sumanji]

Hey,

I've just been having an email convo with a JMicron support guy, and apparently the errors are "normal" behaviour related to a power saving sleep-mode that the card reader engages after 4 minutes when there is no disk in the drive.

JMB38X driver entering D3E mode default is 5 minutes while memory card remove. D3 Enhanced (D3E) power management state is a deep sleep mode of JMB38X to conserve more battery life while the computer is running. It gates the JMB38X internal clock to put the JMB38X controller into low power state when detecting no SD/MMC/XD/MS devices installed.

However the hard locks are definitely related to the presence (and possibly use) of an SD card in the card reader. So I guess it's a hardware fault or incompatibility with the card or the reader...

Singh400 - Here is a list of everything I stripped from XP with nLite... does anything there look like the culprit?

Spleen - I'm using the latest JMicron driver (but problems also ocurred with the Dell driver and older versions of the JMicron driver). Will try the steps you suggested if it hard locks again...

Cheers,

Suman

[edit] Rofl, literally just hard-locked again now, after running with an SD card for about 90 minutes... will time the next crash again and see if there's any pattern

[Sumanji]

Hey,

I'm relatively sure this is a hardware problem now - same thing was occurring in Ubuntu as well but I never put 2 and 2 together (and I'm a Linux noob so no way of proving the relation!).

It doesn't always happening at 90 mins - but usually always after about one hour... maybe the card reader chipset overheating or something? Who knows! Also tried an old Memory Stick I had lying around (128MB, lol) and the same thing happens, so I'm fairly sure it's not the fault of the SD card itself.

Gonna get in touch with Dell today and sort out an RMA!

Cheers,

Suman