Windows 10: Front USB ports are slow and cause Windows Explorer to lock up

Hello! I hope everybody's been doing okay. My computer has had a problem for many years. It happened in Windows 7 and in Windows 10 after I upgraded to it. My Windows 10 is version 1909.

I have a custom computer that's 7 years old. I have two USB 2.0 ports on the front of my computer. They work fine for a mouse or wireless game controller, but some devices cause problems. I know that my mp3 player, USB3 flash drive, and LG smartphone cause problems. Most of the time this happens though the problem's behavior has changed recently.

Usually when I plug the devices into the front USB ports, they are extremely slow to load the directory of files. Afterwards, there is a huge delay before opening small files. Big files will freeze Windows Explorer along with copying or moving files. The Explorer window lock ups until I unplug the device, then everything instantly starts working again. While the Explorer window is locked up, other Explorer windows take a while to load even though I am browsing on the PC's built-in hard drive.

Today, my LG smartphone seemed to work just fine, but when I copied a folder to it, it refused to copy over 3 files. I didn't receive an error, but I heard a ding sound in the background. On my phone, I can see that indeed the folder copied over except for the 3 files.

I unplugged my LG and later copied a folder of 52 files, and it copied over 50 but missed 2. As it copied, I heard two dings but an error never appeared. Then I selected the 2 files by themselves and was able to copy them over when I tried again. The strange thing is that the two files that were missed are at the bottom of the directory, but I heard the dings in the middle of copying (when the progress bar wasn't at the end). It would make more sense to hear them near the end, right?

Now, my USB3 drive appears with a generic icon, name, and no storage capacity displayed. When I click on it, my Explorer only displays the loading bar in the address bar which never finishes. I don't remember this happening until recently, since it usually opens but is very slow. Last time, Windows Explorer froze when I clicked on it and all the windows and the taskbar stopped responding. The window was greyed out but the taskbar looked normal, I just couldn't click it. I could Ctrl-alt-del, but clicking Open Task Manager did nothing. The game I was playing was working fine during this time.

I decided to log out and back in using the Ctrl-alt-del screen, which greeted me no taskbar and a black background. I open Task Manager and saw that two Windows Explorers were running, so I clicked Restart, but the processes simply disappeared from the list. I ran explorer.exe, but the screen remained black despite the WIndows Explorer process appearing. I then unplugged the USB drive and the wallpaper and taskbar suddenly appeared like before when the window hung.

Could you help me try to fix the problem? That would be great! It's not a big deal, since I could always plug them into the back, but it's a strange problem.

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I just connected my phone again. When I browse its files, everything seems to load quickly such as thumbnails. But when I clicked on a photo, I get an error: "Can't read from the source file or disk." Then I tried to browse the phone with the error message open, and I got the error "The device is currently busy and its contents may not be fully displayed." After I closed the messages, my phone still shows up and no longer has a busy error, but clicking on a storage (e.g. SD card or internal storage) takes a while to load before saying "This folder is empty."


:)

 

Front USB ports are slow and cause Windows Explorer to lock up

Hello! I hope everybody's been doing okay. My computer has had a problem for many years. It happened in Windows 7 and in Windows 10 after I upgraded to it. My Windows 10 is version 1909.

I have a custom computer that's 7 years old. I have two USB 2.0 ports on the front of my computer. They work fine for a mouse or wireless game controller, but some devices cause problems. I know that my mp3 player, USB3 flash drive, and LG smartphone cause problems. Most of the time this happens though the problem's behavior has changed recently.

Usually when I plug the devices into the front USB ports, they are extremely slow to load the directory of files. Afterwards, there is a huge delay before opening small files. Big files will freeze Windows Explorer along with copying or moving files. The Explorer window lock ups until I unplug the device, then everything instantly starts working again. While the Explorer window is locked up, other Explorer windows take a while to load even though I am browsing on the PC's built-in hard drive.

Today, my LG smartphone seemed to work just fine, but when I copied a folder to it, it refused to copy over 3 files. I didn't receive an error, but I heard a ding sound in the background. On my phone, I can see that indeed the folder copied over except for the 3 files.

I unplugged my LG and later copied a folder of 52 files, and it copied over 50 but missed 2. As it copied, I heard two dings but an error never appeared. Then I selected the 2 files by themselves and was able to copy them over when I tried again. The strange thing is that the two files that were missed are at the bottom of the directory, but I heard the dings in the middle of copying (when the progress bar wasn't at the end). It would make more sense to hear them near the end, right?

Now, my USB3 drive appears with a generic icon, name, and no storage capacity displayed. When I click on it, my Explorer only displays the loading bar in the address bar which never finishes. I don't remember this happening until recently, since it usually opens but is very slow. Last time, Windows Explorer froze when I clicked on it and all the windows and the taskbar stopped responding. The window was greyed out but the taskbar looked normal, I just couldn't click it. I could Ctrl-alt-del, but clicking Open Task Manager did nothing. The game I was playing was working fine during this time.

I decided to log out and back in using the Ctrl-alt-del screen, which greeted me no taskbar and a black background. I open Task Manager and saw that two Windows Explorers were running, so I clicked Restart, but the processes simply disappeared from the list. I ran explorer.exe, but the screen remained black despite the WIndows Explorer process appearing. I then unplugged the USB drive and the wallpaper and taskbar suddenly appeared like before when the window hung.

Could you help me try to fix the problem? That would be great! It's not a big deal, since I could always plug them into the back, but it's a strange problem.

- - - Updated - - -

I just connected my phone again. When I browse its files, everything seems to load quickly such as thumbnails. But when I clicked on a photo, I get an error: "Can't read from the source file or disk." Then I tried to browse the phone with the error message open, and I got the error "The device is currently busy and its contents may not be fully displayed." After I closed the messages, my phone still shows up and no longer has a busy error, but clicking on a storage (e.g. SD card or internal storage) takes a while to load before saying "This folder is empty."

 

Front USB ports are slow and cause Windows Explorer to lock up

Oh wait, I have the USB mic and WiFi adapter. I plugged in the WiFi adapter and everything was fine. The mic causes my MP3 player to stop working and disappear from Device Manager. I realized by looking at the USB Device Tree Viewer that the mic really adds multiple devices, Dynex USB Mic Device, USB Input Device, and HID-compliant consumer control device.

I tried to navigate through my MP3 player after it malfunctioned. Usually if I plug in the MP3 player first then a bad device such as my wireless mouse, the MP3 player doesn't malfunction until I double click on it to open it again. Then it disconnects from my PC by itself. Instead of clicking on it, I used Command Prompt and saw some strange errors/symbols. Maybe it would be useful for a curious expert. I think my problem is solved, though. I can just avoid plugging in my wireless mouse, controller, or USB mic into the front ports.



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Thank you a lot for the advice. I didn't know that it could be the problem. Props to PC manufacturers for making sure that their front USB ports are good.

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Thanks for helping me out with this. I think I'll be okay, because now I learned to be careful with my front USB ports and hopefully upgrade to USB 3.0 someday. Take care and thanks again.

 

Front USB ports are slow and cause Windows Explorer to lock up

That's good to know about. Thanks for sharing the knowledge. Do you think it could cause my problem? My problem is not so much that the device is slow, but it doesn't work at all. If I tried to open up a small image, for example, it would freeze the entire Windows Explorer and just finding out which files are in a folder takes a while to load.

I was experimenting with my USB devices and I noticed more behaviors. I have a short USB cable that came with Beats headphones, and my MP3 player always malfunctions when it's plugged in to the PC with this cable. So I will use a good cable.

I put the controller in wired mode and plugged it into the front. It also causes my devices to malfunction. I learned that having my wireless mouse, wireless controller, or wired controller on the front ports causes malfunctions. However, my wired keyboard and wired mouse do not cause problems plugged in the front. On the back ports, all the devices get along with each other.

The malfunctions are only with storage devices, I think, as I do not have any other USB devices I can test with. The wireless mouse and the wireless controller dongle get along on the front ports. I'm fairly sure both dongles are 2.4 Ghz, so maybe the problem has to do with that. Though, that would not explain why a wired controller causes problems. Could it also have to do with "HID"? (a guess) The wireless mouse and controller both add devices under "Human Interface Devices" in Device Manager. My controller pretends to be an Xbox controller, so it has a special category "Xbox 360 Peripherals", but it still adds devices under "Human Interface Devices" category.