Western Digital Essential 500GB Not Recognized XP

[mrr2534]

Hi, Ron. Yes, I tried it twice. The "working" drive came on immediately. Its LED light came on solid and started blinking when it was recognized. The LED lights of the other 2 didn't come on at all, even though I can hear "normal" whirring sounds when I put my ear to them. Only the "working" one is listed in disk mgt. Doesn't this suggest that the other two external hd are not getting enough power??? But if this is so, why do I hear them (presumably) working normally?

[Reloadron]

Originally Posted by mrr2534

Hi, Ron. Yes, I tried it twice. The "working" drive came on immediately. Its LED light came on solid and started blinking when it was recognized. The LED lights of the other 2 didn't come on at all, even though I can hear "normal" whirring sounds when I put my ear to them. Only the "working" one is listed in disk mgt. Doesn't this suggest that the other two external hd are not getting enough power??? But if this is so, why do I hear them (presumably) working normally?

Yeah, something is weird about this. Those drives are externally powered and the spin up should indicate they are powered fine. I guess you could play a little musical power supply as it wouldn't hurt.

The blinking on the one that works tells us the system is accessing the drive. Makes sense. They are all USB 2.0. Have you tried doing musical ports and see if another behaves. Meaning place a non working drive in the port of the one that works?

All 3 were running fine. They were only moved. Beyond that, nothing has changed.

Ron

[mrr2534]

Yes, exactly. And now on to the yellow light. There is one circular light on the hd. Before... as soon as it was powered on, it would light solidly... then start blinking when it was recognized by XP. The fact that neither has a light now... even though each is spinning up... suggests...????

[screwballl]

sounds like windows forgot the proper driver for them and they may need to be reinstalled....

[mrr2534]

Except that WD doesn't supply a installation disk for XP (only Win98)... supposed to be plug and play

[screwballl]

right, so you will need to go into the device manager, show hidden devices, and remove the USB related driver and possibly the WD driver. Disconnect the 3rd working one the proper way before doing this.

[Reloadron]

Originally Posted by mrr2534

Yes, exactly. And now on to the yellow light. There is one circular light on the hd. Before... as soon as it was powered on, it would light solidly... then start blinking when it was recognized by XP. The fact that neither has a light now... even though each is spinning up... suggests...????

This may be worth a read:

Troubleshooting for USB pen drives under Windows XP

Try swapping cables around (again nothing to lose in desperation).

My guess is the light isn't doing anything because the OS simply is not seeing the drive.

Though nothing should have changed and though a drive works of the 3 may not hurt to look in the BIOS for something along the lines of enable legacy USB.

<EDIT> Just saw screwballs quickness. Try what he mentions! Did you do that earlier after his post? </EDIT>

Ron

[mrr2534]

Ok... I'm going to uninstall every hidden USB Mass Storage Device (there are about 25 of those!) and every instance of WDC from disc drives, correct?

The problem with the light is that it does immediately switch on to solid when the "good" drive is powered... and doesn't at all with the other two (...and this is if it's connected to the computer or not)

[mrr2534]

OK... did the above... now the "good" hd is no longer recognized (even though it continues to have a solid light), the other two are as before (not recognized, no light), and no USB Mass Storage Device is listed in Device Manager.

I checked for error messages and there is one that may/may not be significant:
The diskstate_dservice service was unable to log on as .\Administrator with the currently configured password due to the following error:
Logon failure: unknown user name or bad password.

To ensure that the service is configured properly, use the Services snap-in in Microsoft Management Console (MMC).

EDIT: Just tried rebooting with an old Seagate external. It also was not recognized by XP...

EDIT: BTW... The Seagate does show a solid light... but no blinking one

[Reloadron]

Originally Posted by mrr2534

OK... did the above... now the "good" hd is no longer recognized (even though it continues to have a solid light), the other two are as before (not recognized, no light), and no USB Mass Storage Device is listed in Device Manager.

I checked for error messages and there is one that may/may not be significant:
The diskstate_dservice service was unable to log on as .Administrator with the currently configured password due to the following error:
Logon failure: unknown user name or bad password.

To ensure that the service is configured properly, use the Services snap-in in Microsoft Management Console (MMC).

EDIT: Just tried rebooting with an old Seagate external. It also was not recognized by XP...

EDIT: BTW... The Seagate does show a solid light... but no blinking one

OK, I am not sure about the error message.

I know it has been awhile since things went wrong but have you tried doing a system restore back before this started?

Next, you can always reinstall the motherboard USB 2.0 drivers:

GIGABYTE - Support - Motherboard - Driver - GA-K8NS (Rev.1.x)

Just make sure you remove the old drivers and boot with nothing connected to the USB ports except I think you mentioned a USB mouse/keyboard?

Ron