For a couple of months, I have experienced problems on my Win 7 Dell Laptop; System seems to HANG when some USB devices are inserted. The green bar at the top of file explorer window and the USB device appears but seems to be stuck in some sort of inaccessible purgatory state.
Problem seems particularly repeatable on USB devices that at one time or other were put into a MAC and now have the ".trashes" file present. This link may not be real and could be a 'RED HERING'.
HOWEVER, while installing a new HP Printer today, the same thing happened. That is, when I placed the HP factory driver disk into the CD drive I never got to a file listing in File Explorer; Same GREEN BAR hang with the CD drive gringing away, cycling and searching over and over again (a SECURITY SCAN?). After more than 20 minutes I gave up and ejected the CD. Tried again and again (inserting CD, hang, stop, repeat) with same results. The CD drive never came alive so I could list files and perform the driver install.
Connecting these two events, I then went to the Norton 360 control panel to inspect settings. Real Time Protection Settings were:
Auto Protect: ON, Removable Media Scan: ON
I changed settings to:
Auto Protect: ON, Removable Media Scan: OFF
Voila! This seems to have "RESOLVED" the removable media hang condition I've been seeing for both CD and USB devices. I inserted some of the 'stuck' USB devices and low and behold, no hangs for them either.
NOTE: I also have a WIN 10 system with Norton 360 and this computer does not the "hang" problem (same settings, Auto Protect: ON, Removable Media Scan: ON).
Any ideas on what might be going on and how I might resolve the issue so that I can return to Removable Media Scan: ON settings for the WIN 7 machine?