AW13r3 and 17r4 randomly snaps USB drives off and back on.

Have been having an issue on my AW13 where it would disconnect and instantly reconnect my USB flash drive, i thought not much of it at first but its been getting really annoying, and now that ive gotten an AW17, it seems to have the same issue. I cannot transfer my steam games over with a USB hard drive because the drive keeps getting kicked and reconnected randomly.

Is there a solution for this outside motherboard lottery?

 

Could be a failing drive. Try any other drives? Try a different chord? Back everything up asap.

Try updating all drivers etc.

Sent from my LG-VS995 using Tapatalk

 

Ive used 2 drives, they both worked on my GT80, GT83, AM11x, G751JT, and Razer Blade perfectly.

Ive updated all chipset drivers, hesitant on BIOS update because i hear nothing but horror stories about them.

The drives aren't failing and i need to know if it's just me or if there's a known fix, because what IS failing are the USB ports on these alienware laptops that i have.

I literally cannot get software onto the AW17 right now because of this. And it seems this is going to make file transfers in the future a non-option as well on both of these laptops. And honestly, the copypasta response just raises red flags that the hardware is completely kaput and that the entire laptop will need replacement. xx

 

Is it on battery or AC? You could disable Auto Suspend for USB devices in Device Manager.

 

On AC, disabling auto suspend is kinda a given, and no it didnt help.

It seems like USB 3.0 support is broken as connecting things to a USB 2.0 hub or cable first allows them to at least not disconnect as much, but USB 3.0 hubs dont help.

And again, works flawlessly on the GT80 and 83.

 

It isnt faulty USB3 support. but some drives pull more power than they should. thats why some harddrive makers also shipped external harddrives with cables that go into 2 usb ports for extra power.

You could disable power share in the bios. Or else you kinda out of luck.

 

Id be really surprised if a USB thumb drive could be pulling too much power. The only thing it and the hard drive had in common was being USB 3, and they both had the same issue which at least for the moment seemed to be solved by making them interface with the laptop over USB 2.

The hard drive ran off an m11x r3 just fine, if a glorified netbook could handle it i cant see why a 17inch laptop couldnt.

 

You could turn off services such as ESIF upper framework, Intel Rapid Storage, Intel MEI based services (such as HECI,HDCP etc) and try again. Another thing, did you update drivers through Windows Update?

 

HI! You've said you updated all drivers, but lets make sure they are in fact up to date so that we can completely role that out as a possibility. Please download Driver booster 4(completely free) and run it. Let it update all drivers. Restart. Make sure everything looks good in device manager. Being that you have 2 fairly new alienware that are both doing this, it seems unlikely it is a hardware or motherboard issue, but anything is possible, if they still are intermittent, please get back to me. Thanks!

 

@Rothcall: Do you have Dell Support Assist and do a diagnostic test for USB specifically, if it fails ask Dell to replace the USB ports/motherboard.

 

I've had the same problem.

On my Alienware 17 R4 I have 3 external 2.5" USB 3 drives connected all the time, on a powered hub, and 2 self-powered 3.5" drives connected occasionally. The hub is on one of the type A USB ports. That, plus a mouse and an SD card reader on a small hub connected to the thunderbolt port, and a small hub on the type C port. In terms of the number of devices, it's a very similar setup to the one I had on my old XPS laptop running XP (with USB 2), where it worked flawlessly.

On the Alienware 17 R4, I was getting constant random disconnections and freezes. I tried all the standard recommendations: disable power saving, disable selective suspend etc. etc. Nothing worked. I could get a lot more stability by distributing my devices a little more around the ports, but not 100%.

I actually bought a new hub because I believed my old one might be underpowered. Nope. I changed the hard drive enclosures because I reasoned that maybe they didn't play well with the newer drives or with Windows 10. Nope.

Finally, almost a week ago I tried installing the Intel USB 3.0/3.1 drivers found here:

https://www.win-raid.com/t834f25-USB-Drivers-original-and-modded.html

Since then: rock solid. No disconnects. It looks like the Microsoft USB 3 drivers just aren't very stable.

 

this is a problem since aw 15 r1. i never figured out how to fix it. but someone found that using a hub extension fix the problem.

 

i had this problem when i first got my 17 r4, had to set turn HDD off after to 0 minutes, and turn off selective usb suspend, however i had to do it thru command center with admin rights active to save the settings for it to take effect

 

this **** brick my pc, fpr tje another users, avoid to do this

 

Please edit your post & ask users to disable driver signature enforcement for it to work. @judal57 bricked his pc briefly.

 

@Vasudev i have had to eliminate all the certifications from win-rad ca and uninstall manually one by one all the drivers that have been modify by win-rad. also eliminate the pci-bus installed on system devices. not before selecting a custom boot with ( disable the mandatory use of signed drivers)

 

I know it's not the same computer, but I also had identical problems on my Dell Latitude E5450. Disabling USB3.0 in the BIOS did the trick. Now all of the ports are USB2.0-only, but completely stable.

 

hahahah no, i cant do that. i need the usb 3 speeds. i only have the problem when plug something like an smartphone.

 

Inferior quality components dell does it again -_-