Hi. I have a 4GB Pen Drive that, ocassionally, gives the following problems. First, when I open nautilus to check its contents, I notice that it hangs for a while, like reading or scaning the drive. Then, when it finally shows its contents, I try to write something on the drive, and everything seems to work alright. But when I try to unmount it, it gives the following error:

An application is preventing the volume 'ANGEL4GB' from being unmounted

After a while, it unmounts automatically, but when I take it out and put it in the USB slot again, the computer does not detect it. Running lsusb just hangs (I have to press Crtl+Z to cancel the operation or close the terminal window). Also, if I try to connect any other USB PenDrive after all this has happened, it is not detected.

This only happens with this 4GB Pen Drive and another 16 GB Pen drive I sent back after buying it (I thought the drive was defective); I have another 2 GB PenDrive that works without problems.

I'm using Ubuntu 8.04 with kernel 2.6.24-19

Running dmesg | grep usb returns a lot of things, but the one that caught my attention was "device not accepting address 5, error -110" and a couple of other similar errors. Anyway, here's the complete output after reconnecting the pendrive:

angelsguitar@Toshiba:~$ dmesg | grep usb
[ 27.237325] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbfs
[ 27.237357] usbcore: registered new interface driver hub
[ 27.269208] usbcore: registered new device driver usb
[ 28.884773] usb usb1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[ 29.044687] usb usb2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[ 29.160664] usb usb3: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[ 833.437903] usb 3-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2
[ 833.579115] usb 3-3: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[ 833.701178] usbcore: registered new interface driver libusual
[ 833.749648] usbcore: registered new interface driver usb-storage
[ 833.750083] usb-storage: device found at 2
[ 833.750086] usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
[ 838.748389] usb-storage: device scan complete
[ 909.223131] usb 3-3: USB disconnect, address 2
[ 916.812977] usb 3-4: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
[ 916.954266] usb 3-4: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[ 916.981067] usb-storage: device found at 3
[ 916.981072] usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
[ 921.980344] usb-storage: device scan complete
[ 1054.329063] usb 3-4: USB disconnect, address 3
[ 1171.666965] usb 1-2: new full speed USB device using ohci_hcd and address 2
[ 1171.876646] usb 1-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[ 1171.903045] usb-storage: device found at 2
[ 1171.903050] usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
[ 1176.902301] usb-storage: device scan complete
[ 1263.197853] usb 1-2: USB disconnect, address 2
[ 1273.119967] usb 3-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 5
[ 1273.259126] usb 3-3: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[ 1273.288048] usb-storage: device found at 5
[ 1273.288054] usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
[ 1278.287335] usb-storage: device scan complete
[ 1374.680913] usb 3-3: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 5
[ 1390.230929] usb 3-3: device not accepting address 5, error -110
[ 1390.342892] usb 3-3: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 5
[ 1405.892903] usb 3-3: device not accepting address 5, error -110
[ 1405.948918] usb 3-3: USB disconnect, address 5
[ 2475.021997] usb 3-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 6
[ 2490.572024] usb 3-3: device not accepting address 6, error -110
[ 2490.683987] usb 3-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 7
[ 2506.234005] usb 3-3: device not accepting address 7, error -110
[ 2506.345964] usb 3-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 8
[ 2516.773957] usb 3-3: device not accepting address 8, error -110
[ 2516.885917] usb 3-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 9
[ 2527.313904] usb 3-3: device not accepting address 9, error -110

Anyone has an idea of what is happening? Can it be due to an incompatible pen drive? Thanks for your help in advance.

The device number is being incremented all the time; this is either a problem with the udev setup (the persistence rules do not exist or are screwy), or as far as the kernel is concerned, the device was not unmounted properly. Another possibility I can think of is that the device goes into some low-power mode which confuses the kernel because the device was not unmounted properly (but why would such a 'feature' be put on a USB stick?).

What can I do about it?

OK, I found some info on a site named Linux USB (http://www.linux-usb.org) about the "device not accepting address XXX" message I get. I tried appending the "noapic" option to the kernel instruction on menu.lst and rebooted. Well, the usb drive worked well with it, but I lost my wireless connection (it would just hang in there unable to connect to my router). A couple of times my laptop even froze on bootup.

I believe the problem is with my BIOS and its APIC settings. I noticed that my laptop gives this message when booting:

The problem is I cannot use the "noapic" solution because I would loose my network connection and my system becomes unstable.

Is there any other workaround to this?

This will be the case if, for example, you have the Pen Drive open in a file-manager window, or you have a terminal session open in one of the PenDrive's directories.

Some other options to try: apic=verbose or apic=debug will give you debugging information (Maybe you'll see some useful error messages, probably reported to /var/log/messages )

Another option is nolapic ("Tell the kernel not to use the local APIC.") as opposed to noapic ("Prevent the kernel from using any of the IOAPICs that might be present in the system.")

Lastly: If it is an available option, is "Plug & Play" disabled in your BIOS?