[devin73]

Hi,

I've had an external drive for awhile that is not detected on startup. However, if you plug and unplug the drive after windows has booted, it then appears as any other usb device would and runs fine from that point on. Additionally, I just bought a second external drive and it detects normally with no problem. Any suggestions? I've scoured the HD manufacturer's site, my MB manufacturer's site, and the web with no solutions as of yet.

There's no conflict with the drive letters, I've tried swapping out the USB cable, and I've tried various ports to no avail. I'd really appreciate any insight.

Thanks,
Devin


Drive: Maxtor One Touch 5000LE USB 2.0 80GB (NTSF)
Operating System: Windows XP SP2
Motherboard: Tyan K8WE

 

[devin73]

Thought I'd bump the thread since it's a new day and no response so far.

 

[JohnWill]

You could give my driver refresh a try, I normally use this when a drive isn't recognized at all.

First step, Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools, System Restore. Create a restore point and name it something like "Before USB Fix". This is to bail you out if something goes wrong during the following process and makes things worse.

Create a file with NOTEPAD containing the following lines and save it as FIX.REG
-------------------------- Use text after this line --------------------------------
REGEDIT4

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment]

"DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES"="1"
-------------------------- Use text before this line --------------------------------

Double click on FIX.REG and say yes to the Merge Into Registry question.

Unplug ALL USB devices.
Open Device Manager.
View, Show Hidden Devices.
Uninstall all devices under USB Controllers.
Uninstall all devices under Disk Drives that you know are not present.
Uninstall all devices under Storage Volumes. Say no to any reboot prompts until you are finished. Also, if a Storage Volume doesn't uninstall, ignore it and move to the next one.
If you have a yellow ? with unknown devices, uninstall all of the entries there as well.

When this is done, reboot TWICE.

Reconnect the USB devices and see if they're recognized properly.

NOTE: If you have a USB keyboard and/or mouse, you'll have to modify the instructions and leave enough parts for those to function. I don't have one yet, so I haven't had time to modify the instructions.

 

[devin73]

Thanks for the reply. I'll give it a go. As for your last comment under "NOTE", what do you mean by adding enough parts (ports?)? I initially thought it might be changing the "1" in the reg edit but I now see that this tells it to show devices. Where do I modify things to leave enough parts?

Thanks,
Devin

 

[JohnWill]

What I was trying to say is if you uninstall everything, the USB keyboard won't work, which is a problem. OTOH, with XP, as long as it's configured to shutdown with the power button, you can uninstall them in the correct order and get pretty much everything uninstalled when it stops working. Then you just use the power button to shutdown, since you've uninstalled the mouse and keyboard.