For the last few years, I have often struggled with VCM Scanner often freezing up while scanning. I would connect to my car, start the log, close the display so it wouldn't flop around, go for a drive, then find that only a short portion of the drive was actually logged. It was very frustrating to say the least. After seeing that the 'busy' light on the interface would go from the extremely fast flashing to a slow blink when this freeze-up happened, I figured it was due to a loss of communication. However, I recently found that it didn't happen if the display was open on my laptop. When the display is closed, I also noticed that there was an orange hard drive light that would light up if the laptop was bumped or jostled, even just lightly.
After some research, I found out that there is a feature in HP laptops called "ProtectSmart". This will lock the hard drive's read/write arm if the display is closed and it senses movement in order to protect the hard drive from impact damage. Unfortunately, it's way too sensitive, and would often lock the hard drive if I hit a bump or jammed on the noise pedal, which obviously caused the logging to stop. After disabling this protection, I haven't had any issues scanning, even with the display closed.
So, for anyone else who fights with this, consider disabling this protection in control panel.