I am currently trying to make a Norton Ghost backup image of a PC loaded with Windows XP Pro SP3, and it will not properly recognize any external Drives that I plug in via USB to store the image on. It recognizes that new hardware has been plugged in, but then cannot find/install the proper drivers to use that drive. It simply sits in device manager listed as External HDD with the yellow circle containing a question Mark. I have already browsed the Experts Exchange responses to other similar questions and have found no relief... I also noticed that all users with this similar problem had SP 1 or 2, but didn't see any with SP3. Is there a fix for this? I've even tried going to the manufacturers web site to download drivers for the external hard drive, and they don't have any. The drive I'm trying to use is a Western Digital WD800B015.
Device Manager view
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My personal experience is that many of those external USB drives are not of great quality. That is a fairly old model of drive, are you confident that it is still up to par? Does it work on any other machines?
If the external power adapter is not pushing enough power (or not hooked up) it would also show as you described.
I do not believe that SP3 is of relevance.
Problem isolation.
Maybe HDD is damage. Try to use it in other PC to check, if it works, then time to check your machine. If it doesn't, send it back to store.
Try to insert other HDD in your usb port. similar brand will help you isolate the problem. If it load similar HDD, you pc driver sets are OK. need to determine if your HDD has special driver set.
Lastly, I experince similar kind in lacie product. If your hdd has power button. Insert the usb cable, when the install driver error popup, power off the hdd without pulling the usb cable. wait 5sec and power back on the hdd.
Goodluck.
if you can, hook the disk directly to the ide /sata port, and run a diag on it : http://support.wdc.com/dow
this will shwo if the drive is ok or not. if it's ok; you have a bad usb brifge, or cable
Thank you everyone for the input, unfortunately I have already done the majority of what was suggested in all of these posts before I even made the post.
The drive works fine on other, newer, PC's...
I've tried Uninstalling/Re-installing
I've tried inserting it into all of the various USB Ports and get the same result...
I've gone into the BIOS to be sure that all USB ports are enabled....
I've used two different external Hard Drives via USB and neither will recognize properly...
* The only thing that I haven't tried yet is to uninstall the USB controller... maybe I'll try that.
* I've hooked a hard drive up directly via IDE cable to the motherboard and that will read the drive fine, but it's a pain in the butt, because I will need to ghost the image from that drive to 2 identical computers... so i dont want to have to do that hookup every time if I don't have to. There's gotta be a way to fix the USB.
Here are some tips to check when your usb device works on one computer but not another:
http://www.5starsu
Y
http://www.nirsoft.
http://su
from my bag of tricks :
Here a list of things to try :
-in device manager, delete all usb entries and reboot
-then you can download the latest drivers for the chipset, and reinstall it to update the USB root hubs
-start>run>diskmgmt.msc check if the usb devices show up in disk management, then run : start>run>services.msc
In the listing look for removable storage service.
If it is set to Auto, and not started, then start it : click the Start link in the top left...
-In c:\windows\inf, look for usbstor.inf - If it is not there, you can copy it from another PC..When you find it, right click it and select Install
-Change start type in registry
The idea is that the registry value for START has been changed to either 3 or 4 instead of 0, 1, or 2; 3 is Manual and 4 is disabled, 0 is SYSTEM (at kernel boot), 1 is SYSTEM (at login), 2 is AUTOMATIC
Default is 2 for this type of device
path: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/
Click on "Start" then modify binary data --> change to 02 instead 03 or 04
Holy Cow! This is rediculous, but at least I got it solved... Thanks nobus for the suggestions... your last comment finally led me to the solution.
The USBSTOR.INF file must have been corrupted or something... I downloaded it online and installed it and now all is well. The newly downloaded INF was the exact same size as the current one, but the current file gave me an error when I right clicked and tried to install, so I overwrote it with the newly downloaded INF and it installed fine and now the External drive works like a charm.
Thanks everyone for the help!
Incase anyone else runs into this issue, this is where I got the file from>:
http://www.infdump.com/dow
I need to post a correction to this... I found out that it essentially may have had nothing to do with the INF file, but was the fact that the machine had previously had kiosk software installed which changed registry settings to dis-allow USB storage, so by replacing the INF file, this reset the registry setting to allow USB storage devices.
So, all-in-all it was a registry setting that was the problem. Even though I had un-installed the kiosk software, the registry setting was still set to dis-allow USB storage devices.
Thanks again though.
for uninstalling programs, try revouninstaller; it does it much better !
http://www.revouninstaller
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by: suthnginPosted on 2009-11-04 at 13:07:29ID: 25743947
Sounds like the USB Controller could be all goofed up. Have you tried uninstalling the usb controller and letting windows reinstall? Make sure you have a PS2 keyboard and mouse if the drivers will not reinstall by default.
Regards,
Tucker