Connecting USB devices crashes X40 completely?

[mdb]

Hi all,

I'm having a curious problem with my IBM X40 (2371-8NG). It was purchased in August 2004 in the Netherlands. After a while I got blue screens in Windows XP and when restarting the registry was corrupted. I first thought it was because of my extra 512MB SODIMM (from Crucial). I reinstalled everything, left out the extra RAM, and it all worked fine again. Then again I got exactly the same problem. I sent it off to IBM support, but it came back with the message that they couldn't find any problem with the memory.

Today I was connecting an external keyboard and mouse and got exactly the same problem for the third time (e.g. PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA error, corrupted registry). Then I realized that the previous problem had also occurred shortly after connecting an USB keyboard.

Has anyone else experienced this kind of problem? Or does anyone have any clue what's going wrong? I'll be sending my laptop back to IBM again next week, but I would be pleased if anyone here could already give me some clue on what could be wrong...

I've tried tweaking with disabling the trackpoint (suspecting an IRQ problem), letting the BIOS set the IRQs etc. No luck. Hopefully anyone here can shed some light on this problem.

Thanks in advance,
Maarten den Braber

[JohnDrake]

Have you updated both the embedded controller AND the BIOS?

All drivers for the X40 are here:
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-54078

[mdb]

I had only updated the BIOS. I've now updated both, but the problem keeps appearing. All other drivers are the last versions from the IBM website. E.g. I had to restart Mozilla Firefox four times to be able to post this reply

The feeling I have is that something 'permanently' breaks after inserting USB devices. After that problems keep apprearing. When doing a clean install of Windows XP Professional (done that twice) there seem to be no immediate problems. But it all still seems a lot like memory problems to me... Yesterday I had to try 3 times to install Mozilla Firefox. When unpacking the installation files the CRC check failed. It halted the times at different points when unpacking.

I would be very willing to try some other suggestions (if someone has them)!

P.S. I will try memtest86 soon, but I first have to get my USB-stick back to be able to boot memtest86 without a floppy drive/bootable CD-ROM.

[mdb]

John: your tip just might have done the trick after all. Yesterday I came home tired, powered down my X40 and haven't looked at it anymore. When I booted it today, it worked flawlessly. Connecting USB devices, external display, hibernating, everything!

Hopefully it stays this way *knock on wood*! Thanks for your tip!

Thanks!
Maarten