USB Drive misconfigured. Can it be reconfigured? 3

[JASJim]

I installed a USP 2.0 PCI card and an external drive on my XP SP2 system and then connected a portable hub to the card. I ran into all sorts of issues where anything I put into the hub, would not be detected. So put the hub aside for later. Then I added another ext drive and started to have problems. I thooght it was IRQ conflicts but everything was fine. Finally, I replaced the PCI board with a Bulkin card and everything was fine... except during the process I reconfigured the first drive to be something other than a disk! I did this via Add New Hardware. I was desparate as nothing I did would get the system to find drivers for this. This drive has working fine for 6 months and is full of my pictures, home videos, and some movies. I have contacted the mfgr (SimpleTech) and they said they'll replace it. Personally, I don't want my family history to get mailed off anywhere. There must be a way to reconfigure the device. Below is a comparison of some of the device details compared to a Maxtor One Touch I have:
M= Maxtor
S= SimpleTech

Instance ID:
M= {E9C3AF91-1F3B-474F-B307-1ECE7FF4AF41}\ONETOUCH_11\B413LXGHUSB
S= USB\VID_04B4&PID_6830\5&21A7A874&0&1 (No { } brackets)

Hardware ID:
M= {E9C3AF91-1F3B-474F-B307-1ECE7FF4AF41}
S= USB\VID_04B4&PID_6830\5&21A7A874&0&1&REV_0024

Compatable ID's:
M= GenDisk

S= USB\Class_ff&SubClass_00&Prot_00
USB\Class_ff&SubClass_00
USB\Class_ff

Matching Device ID:
M= gendisk
S= <blank>

Service:
M= disk
S= <blank>

Class Installer:
M= StorProp.Dll,DiskClassInstaller
S= <blank>

Enumerator:
M= {E9C3AF91-1F3B-474F-B307-1ECE7FF4AF41}
S= USB
Does anyone know if this can be reconfigured??

 

[garebo]

If its a hard drive then simply take it out of the external box, slave it via a ide cable, go into windows and format it.
Then you should be able to put it back in the external box and have it show up as a regular drive.


Good advice + great people = tek-tips

 

[bcastner]

I am not exactly sure what was done, but whatever it was it was not to the drive itself.

Unplug the drive from the hub. Go to Device Manager and remote the existing entry. You likely will have to click View, Show hidden devices first.

Reboot and replug the drive and see if it is detected. You should not need to use the New hardware wizard.

 

[JASJim]

USBMAN.com had a complete write up on refreshing the USB stack. Via SafeMode I uninstalled (usb only) devices, hubs, controllers including hidden devices. I brought the drive in Friday and attached it to the WIN2000 machine and it detected device "24" and could not find drivers.

This drive uses the XP drivers and while it was still being detected as a drive (and couldn't find a driver anymore), I intentionally used the Add New Hardware wizard so I could define the device from the backend. Unfortunately, there was no "drive" option to pick so picked something else, so now I have a nice device 24. That's is why I want to reconfigure it as a drive! No where does any peripheral device close to drive appear on any of the selections.

 

[bcastner]

You do not need the new Hardware Wizard.
You might need a hotfix:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=892050

 

[JASJim]

Thank you bcastner. You and I have "talked" about this (last week in the Windows Update forum). All I wanted aty that time was the drivers for the drive, so when I attached it, I'd "have the disk" and load those drivers because it couldn't find any on my system. You missed the part about me bringing the drive into work, putting it on a different operating system and have it detected as device "24". It still had all the driver details as shown in the original post. No matter where I take the drive, whatever operatin system is on whatever PC, it detects a "24" and not a "disk drive". I made it a "24" via add new hardware. I want to make it a disk drive again. I know I sound like an idiot. We'er all good at something!

 

[garebo]

How about using a win98 bootdisk and use fdisk and partition and the drive, then it can be formatted at the same time, even though its fat32. After that you could slave it on a win xp system and convert the drive to NTFS.
That is, if you can take the drive out of the box.


Good advice + great people = tek-tips

 

[bcastner]

Step 1: Remove Hidden Devices

1. Click Start. Click Run. Type cmd and press OK.
2. Type "set DEVMGR_SHOW_DETAILS=1" (without quotation marks) and press Enter.
3. Type "set DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES=1" (without quotation marks) and Press Enter.
4. Type "start devmgmt.msc" (without quotation marks) and click press Enter.
5. Click View. Click Show hidden devices.
6. Click "+" to expand Imaging devices, Unknown devices and USB devices.
7. Are there any USB devices and unknown devices (including grayed out devices)? If so, please right click it and click Uninstall.

Step 2: Remove all oem*.inf files

=========================

1. Click start and click run then under the run line type in the command "cmd" (without the quotation marks)

2. In the command line, type in the following (without the quotes) and press enter after each command:

"cd \windows\inf"
"ren infcache.1 *.old"
"ren oem*.inf *.old"
"del C:\windows\setupapi.log"
"exit"

Step 3: Removing all entries under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Enum/USB that start with VID

===============================================

Removing the VID entries from the registry will cause them to be redetected at restart.

CAUTION: If you have a USB keyboard or mouse, do not remove the VID entry for these devices, otherwise, Windows may not restart correctly.

1. Click Start and click Run. Type regedit and click OK. The Registry Editor window will open.

2. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Enum\USB.

3. Highlight and delete all the VID_.... entries.

Permissions may be set allowing the deletion of the VID_ entries by following the steps below:

a)Right-click the key to be deleted, and then click Permissions. The VID_... Permissions window will open.
b)With Everyone highlighted in the Group or User name section, select Full Control in the Permissions section.
c)Click Apply, and then click OK.

4. Turn off the computer.

Step 4: Reconnect the USB device to the computer system:

=============================

1. With the computer system turned off, reconnect the USB hub to the the USB port.
2.Restart the computer.
3.A New Hardware Detected window should open and reload the drivers.

 

[JASJim]

These are great ideas. I'll mess with them Tuesday night. Thanks all, I will update.

 

[JASJim]

After a good night's sleep... bcastner, your last 2 suggestions are all about the PC. It is, in fact, the drive. My first thought this AM was to take the drive to work and fix it there. Remember, no matter what PC I plug this into, that PC sees this device as "24" with all the settings as detailed in the original post (the "S= " values are for this problem drive compared with the Maxtor drive I have sitting next to it). So if I wanted to get my work PC to see this as a drive, I wouldn't be messing with the registry or anything else in that arena.

garebo, in my mind, is on the right track. Because I don't know any better (yet) my thinking is, I sent software commands to the drive, reconfiguring it. Now I want to send different commands to configure it as a harddrive.

OR, because windows cannot find drivers for this device, if I had a driver set (inf, sys, dll ???) on a floppy that would allow me to load for this device, I think I'd be all set.

 

[garebo]

I sent software commands to the drive, reconfiguring it. Now I want to send different commands to configure it as a harddrive."

Thats exactly what i was thinking. I dont have the knowledge you two guys have but in my mind i narrowed it down to software commands.

Also, many times i have had problems with hard drives, one problem or another, but each problem preventing a format of the h drive. And each time i use the method above i got the h drive back to the state where its working properly and can be formatted. So i figure why not just do that to this h drive and if it works then all should be well, at least for the h drive anyway.




Good advice + great people = tek-tips

 

[JASJim]

I don't have the knowledge you two guys have but... "

garebo, you assume too much! It's my lack of knowledge that got me here! And because no one has yet told me I can't do it, I am trying to find a way. I am not in a hurry to resolve this because I don't want to lose the data, if possible. I have several painful hours of home video clips I edited of my children (8 & 10 then - 20 & 22 now!) that I have yet burned to DVD. If I have to reformat to recover the drive itself, I will do so. It just seems logical that if I was able to redefine the device (the wizard had to be sending commands to it), I should be able to do it again. Of course, I may have just fried whatever holds the information on the drive (firmware chip? boot record? I have no idea, but NOT knowing makes one look for solutions where on one else would.

 

[garebo]

On my end, i was forgetting you want to save the data! Now i see thats what bcastner is trying to do.
I suppose its too late to try a system restore and
I dont even know if that would help due to the hardware changes?


Good advice + great people = tek-tips

 

[JASJim]

Remember, it is specific to the drive, not the PC. If it is possible to "reconfigure" this, then it "should" be possible to do on any machine, any operation system, back to say, WIN98. If I don't get anywhere, I'll start looking for XP programmers.

 

[garebo]

Thats right, i half knew, since its really a hardware issue now, system restore can only do software issues.
You might try checking the microsoft website or the hard drive mfgr website.


Good advice + great people = tek-tips

 

[bcastner]

I just do not believe anything by the New Hardware Wizard was written to the device. There is not only no need, but it contradicts the driver model for NT.

Any information written would have been in the registry, and consequently, in Device Manager.

To review what was done, the setupappi.log file should show you the details of the .inf file used. See the discussion section on .inf files here, and see the very last section on problem solving for USB devices:

http://www.lvr.com/usb.htm

 

[jimp56]

if its a normal IDE hard drive in an external usb enclosure box, you can remove the hard drive itself from the enclosure and install it internally using normal procedures- which should get you your data back.

once you have your data, you can reinstall the drive into the enclosure and investigate why the box is being mis-identified during plug n play.

 

[garebo]

Thats exactly what i mentioned in the beginning of this thread, first reply.
At least give it a try since you want your data.



Good advice + great people = tek-tips

 

[bcastner]

garebo,

But, hey, you had him reformatting the beast!
Seriously, this should be recoverable.

Given the imporatance to the Original Poster of the video and other information stored on the drive, I would plug it into an XP machine that has never seen the thing, and start from there.

JASJim, see the discussion here:

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Storage/Q_20811515.html

 

[JASJim]

I really appreciate you guys hanging in there.

bcastner,
The only conflict (mental anguish) I have with your software approach is that I put it on my PC at work and it detects the device as unknown device "24". My work machine was purchased with XP Prof, but the company as a whole has not upgraded to XP, so they loaded WIN2000.

jimp56,
Thanks for jumping in, I appreciate it.

garebo,
Next step will be your mechanical approach. I'll see if I can mechanically hook it up as a slave internal via IDE. If everything goes well, I'll transfer all the files to my ext maxtor and then I can have a field day with the SimpleTech.

Remember, the root cause was using a CompUSA generic 2.0 PCI board. Replacing it with the Bulkin PCI board fixed my driver and PnP detection issues for the Maxtor plus the 2.0 ext hub. And yes, I did not need to use "Add New Hardware" wizard because that was not the problem. BUT, I did and I did so, intentionally trying to trick it by telling it was a system device ("disk" wasn't on the selection list). This is why I thought I may have "burned in" a new ID spec in what ever chip or thing is inside the ext box, between the usb cable and the drive. I told you that I don't know that I don't know! :-0 I may have some time to mess with it tonight.