Computer help

[Anakonda69]

computer will not recognize plug n play external hd. tried all the troubleshooting things in manual as well as in windows....any help? it says everything is working fine it just won't read the drive. only had it maybe 6 months.....

[Silver86]

e-sata or usb?

[ND4SPD]

Need more information on the external drive.

Try going into the control panel, then on the left hand side, select "switch to classic view". Next go into "Administrative Tools", next Computer Management. In the window that comes up double-click "Storage" on the right part of the window. Then double-click "Disk Management". What you are looking for is a Disk # with the size the same as your external hard drive. It is possible it's trying to use the same drive letter as something else. So if you find it in the bottom right part of the window (scroll down through all of the drives if there are more than 3 or 4) and don't see it in the top right part of the window, you need to find it in the bottom right area then right click and hit "Change Drive Letters or Paths". Then hit "Change" and from the dropdown box, select a new drive letter for it and hit OK. It will probably warn you about programs not working and so forth, just hit okay or accept or whatever. If it worked you should be able to close out of those windows then go into My Computer and find it. If that doesn't work, you can try this... which is more involved.

You can try going into the Device Manager and uninstalling all of the USB hubs on your computer and then redetect them. Right click on "My Computer" and hit Properties, then select the Hardware tab. Next hit the Device Manager button. Under the View menu, select "View By Connection". Expand the first Item... should be ACPI System or something like that, then expand "Microsoft ACPI Compliant Blah Blah Blah". Next go down to the PCI Bus and expand that. Now look for all the items with the USB symbol next to them (look like pitchforks). If your mouse and Keyboard Are not USB, then all you have to do is right click on each one of those pitchforks and select Uninstall. If you do have a USB mouse and keyboard you will need to expand all of the USB items fully so you can see where your mouse and keyboard are connected (hopefully the hard drive isn't connected to the same bus as the mouse and keyboard). Now right click on all of the top level USB entries (except for the ones with your mouse and keyboard) and hit "uninstall". The computer will do a few things, probably make some noises... then under the "Action" menu. Hit scan for changes. It should go through and reinstall all of those ports.