USB storage suddenly not recognized 3

[Shadthelad]

Who can give a hand to a naive user?

I have had a WD external hard drive for a couple of years, using it with a laptop running XP with no problems. I recently got another laptop, running Vista, and used the WD device to transfer some photos and music files to the Vista machine. All went well, and afterwards, I continued to use the device with the XP machine with no change in performance.

Yesterday, though, I attached the USB device to the XP machine and it was not recognized. To see whether the problem was with the device, I attached it to the Vista machine. Lo and behold, the Vista machine DID recognize the device.

I tried downloading the drivers for the device to the XP machine, just in case they had become corrupted: No go.

So now I have a storage device that seems to work fine, but it isn't recognized by one of my two computers. Any ideas?

 

[Freestone]

Has any device been added to the XP machine that may be using the drive letter normally assigned to the WD external hard drive?

 

[Shadthelad]

No. I attached a printer, but it has been used before during the time that I have had this USB drive.

 

[vacunita]

Attach the WD to the XP machine and Right click on My Computer then select Manage. Then go down to Storage , and select Drive Management.

Does the Drive appear there?

If its there does it have a letter assigned to it?

If it doesn't can you Right click on it and select change Drive Letters and Paths, and then assign a drive letter to it?



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Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[Shadthelad]

THANK YOU, Vacunita!!! You have solved the problem, and I think I even understand how this happened. When I followed the steps you outlined, I found that the WD drive had been assigned to Drive F, which is already assigned to a server. By changing it to E, I was back in business. I think I must have attached the drive and the printer at the same time yesterday, something I might not have done before, and so this was the first time this problem manifested.

Case closed!

 

[vacunita]

Glad I could Help.

----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[Freestone]

Have a star vacunita. You completed where I was headed with my earlier question.

 

[vacunita]

Thanks for the star freestone. Since you gave me the idea with the drive letters. I'll repay the favor and give you a star.

----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.