External hard drives not *seen* after XP Home reinstall

[Shel]

Hi:

XP sp2, Athlon 2000+, 1GB RAM, 120GB HD, 80 & 160GB external drives.

I just completed a reinstall of XP Home, installed sp1 + sp2, installed all updates from MS website. The install was NOT "repair" via the Recovery console, but an over-itself repair-option for the existing installation via "setup" to retain applications, settings etc.

The result was a nicely revitalised system as expected.

However ....

..... XP suddenly does not now *see* my two external HDs, 160GB Western Digital - 80GB Maxtor.

Both are fairly new, both NTFS, are each maybe around a third of capacity.

All was working fine right up to earlier this afternoon, and all I did was reinstall XP and they turned invisible! They are both plug-and-play, so no drivers to install anyway.

Everything else on the system works fine - in fact it is generally a tad "nippier" anyway for the spring-clean, just as intended. Perfect in fact, except for the unseen HDs!!

This is my work machine and I need to access the data on them fairly routinely on this PC (engineering drawings), else clients will start complaining through their chequebooks!

I have disconnected/powered-off/waited/reconnected, checked the USB card (fine!), checked the drives on another (old and fragile!) PC running w98 and they are fine, it's just that for some reason my regular machine isn't recognising them yet.

I have looked through this forum quite extensively first, thinking that this is a repeatable scenario and someone else may well have had the same thing happen, but though I found a couple of similar problems there wasn't quite the same thing and all the suggestions I tried from those threads anyway still didn't improve anything.

In fact it actually sounds to me very much like I am missing something quite basic, and I have a feeling I just might be a little embarasssed by the answer, but right now if someone has had this happen and adjusted-it out, or would point out what I am missing, I would appreciate it very greatly ...

Okay I am off home after working on this all afternoon here at the office .. 7.45 pm here in the UK now and I need to eat as well!! I'll log on later from there with my fingers crossed that an eXPert might have strolled this way ...

Thanks,

Shel

[snowmonkey]

You MAY only be missing the drive letter section..........Just see if this is your issue

How to add drive letter to a hard drive.
http://support.microsoft.com/default...307844&sd=tech

Cheers

[bctimber]

Greetings ...

i'm having the same or a similar problem ...

I've got two 120gb buslink usb drives that are working perfect in win2000, but in XP, I have a drive letter (a valid one) but can only see the root directories, not the files within. I've defrag'd and ran chkdsk thru win2000 and all is fine. the drives are formatted with NTFS. Buslink tech support says that the drive is "broken" ... I think not though, being that I'm using it right now!
The systems:
Win2000 machine:
intel 815e chipset, 933mhz cpu, 512mb ram, promise ide raid with two 80gb drives (raid 1), WD 20gb boot drive as primary master, plextor cd/rw as sec master, zip250 as sec. slave, belkin usb 2.0 adaptor, 3com NIC ... usb drive is connected to the usb adapter not the mainboard. pretty much every slot stuffed with something!

winXP pro machines (7 with the same issue)
matching Gateway with intel 945 chipset, 3.0ghz cpu, 512 mb ram, media card reader via usb on mainboard, 160 sata5 hdd, dvd-ram drive, nvidia display, all else on mainboard.

both machines are new, fully patched installations (new = two weeks)

bad or broken driver due to a recent XP patch???

Thanks!
Tom.

[bctimber]

update ... more info

(possible pertaining to the "take control" solution)

for the heck of it, I set up a share on the win2k machine for the winXP machine, and I can read all on the drive just fine.

a recap:
usb hdd connected to a usb adapter on machine running win2k: drive works
usb hdd connected per above, accessed via share from winxp machine: drive works
usb hdd connected to winxp machine: drive letter assigned, but no access.

definite winXP driver problem brought on by a recent patch!!

how does one report this to MS? I'd like to bring my drive home to sync files to the server!

[Shel]

Originally Posted by snowmonkey

You MAY only be missing the drive letter section..........Just see if this is your issue

Cheers

Thanks, but sadly not the case. XP isn't *seeing* the drives in the first place (Disc Manager etc.) to be able to assign/reassign drive letters to ... chance would be a fine thing!! Otherwise a good call, and thanks for the suggestion.

Shel

[Shel]

bctimber: 2+2=3 I guess in XP logic. If you get it to =4 any time soon I'd appreciate a line here? Thanks

Shel

[Shel]

Well it seems I was right to expect to be maybe a little embarrassed by the answer!

Though maybe I don't need to be too much ...

I initially felt it could really only be either a USB issue or a driver issue for the unseen drives, though I felt able to retire those thoughts very quickly because XP appeared to have the correct drivers onboard plus yes I had checked all 5 (4 external and 1 internal) USB ports on the (Belkin) card, and both the mouse and a card-reader worked fine in all.

From a websearch last night the sudden-lost-drives condition in fact appears not to be uncommon in XP after all, the agent-provocateur generally being the recent installation of SP2.

Whilst less prevalent now because SP2 is not such a high take-up as when first released, the incidence of disappearing drives is still being reported against its installation.

So I reckoned last night that my issue was likely the same, as I had reinstalled SP2 as part of upgrading my XP repair-install, and that there should therefore be a work-around; as far as I got then was uncovering that a MS Hotfix was around somewhere pending incorporation in to an eventual (?) SP3.

I had planned to follow-through along those lines this morning and hopefully resolve things, but on the measure-twice / cut-once principle - and also because I wasn't excatly attracted by the thought of possible deeper fault-chasing if the hotfix didn't do the trick after all - I installed WD and Maxtor's drivers from their websites anyway, and .... still nothing!

And even though the USB ports seemed fine from testing with the mouse and card-reader, I thought I might just as well carry out the same pointless exercise there too so went to Belkin's site and (re)installed the driver for their card, and ... suddenly I had two drives back!

So yes it was very basic, USB not being seen, or possibly only being part-seen ... er, maybe! Although, I don't have an explanation why the mouse and card reader worked fine and the drives didn't in the same ports/card ... I almost didn't take that last step for that reason ...

Logic suggests that IF the USB was for some unclear reason able to handle some connections but not others, and IF the absence of drive-drivers was material, then IF they still weren't seen and IF the USB-driver kicked something in once (re)installed, THEN the port/s would finally see the drives ... ummmmmm ... or something. That's what logic version-XP does for you I guess. Personally, 2+2=4 tends to cover a lot of ground for me - logic is one thing but common-sense is totally different and tends to get the job done more often in the real world.

But bring back Spock for the rest just the same.

So anyway ...

... for the benefit of anyone coming across this later who might be searching for an answer to the same problem, if this sounds like what you have found/seen, then if it doesn't look broke, fix it just the same!

If that doesn't work however and you want to carry on chasing-down the MS Hotfix, pick up the trail here

http://support.microsoft.com/defaul...kb;en-us;885464

Gates ... are you listening?!

***********

Thanks for the comments and suggestions, all right on the mark but unknowingly and improperly wrong-footed by the same thing that threw me

Shel