External HD Technibble challenge of the day!!

[Heriberto t.]

i know its weird, but are you tring to install it on an admin account? I have found out that my flash drive and an external HDD wouldnt work on a computer but it did when i connected it to another one.

i still dont know what's wrong, it says i dont have enough privlages to run U3 for my flashdrive, and for my external HDD, it does the same thing you're facing.

 

[enuro12]

If you get the yellow mark in device manager, no amount of checking will give you any results.

My initial though was similar to the other drive letter issues people told you to check. In my case, i've seen network drives mess usb drives up. However if your drive works then that's not the issue. (If it were, your flash drive would have had the same problem, as any new flash drive inserted into the system would try to take the same 'used' drive letter)



When you plug it into the different pc, does it load as a "Generic Mass Storage Device"?

 

[ell]

If you get the yellow mark in device manager, no amount of checking will give you any results.

My initial though was similar to the other drive letter issues people told you to check. In my case, i've seen network drives mess usb drives up. However if your drive works then that's not the issue. (If it were, your flash drive would have had the same problem, as any new flash drive inserted into the system would try to take the same 'used' drive letter)



When you plug it into the different pc, does it load as a "Generic Mass Storage Device"?

yes it does. As for when I used my flash drive, it was the last time I had a service call there a couple weeks ago, and I may have used the 2nd front port, I don't recall. I'm sure he messed with it himself also. I'm sticking with the conflicting drive letter theory, especially since his master is E, I wish he would call and let me know if he can see the external in drive manager or not.

 

[purple_minion]

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2006/03/12/no-drive-letter-for-usb-or-firewire-drive/
http://forums.computershopper.com/showthread.php?t=11
http://en.kioskea.net/forum/affich-31876-external-hd-no-longer-works-with-computer

Also perhaps I missed it but does the device manager say anything in properties about the ! Have you tried the usbdeview and fiddled with that, perhaps removing all references to that device. I read on a few of those forums I posted above about drive letter issues either assigned to another drive, or somehow assigned to the physical drive AND the partition. You might also start up something like UBCD or ubuntu and see if the drive works fine there to eliminate flaky hardware.

 

[ell]

Solved!

sorry I didn't post the results sooner, this is just one of those things thats so annoying. I had my customer unplug all rear usb devices, printer, etc and have him plug the external drive there-worked! I had tried one of the rear ports already, but not the same one that the printer used, that did the trick. No issue with his master being E. The external is now W. Thanks everybody for your input!