Dual Boot System XP sees WD USB drive Windows 7 Doesn't

This just happened recently. Suddenly, after a boot this morning, I cannot see the WD USB MY Book in Windows 7.

It shows up in the device manager, but not My Computer with the other drives. When booting to the XP OS, it sees it accesses it just fine.

I have powered off the drive and powered it back and hear the system disconnect and the re-connect to it on power up. The 64 bit drivers have been reloaded in the device manager but that does not fix the issue.

Any suggestions please?

Thanks

 

jkb242,

Can you see it in Disk Management? If so, can you assign a drive letter?

 

Brian,

Thanks so very much!!

I can see the drive but I was afraid to make any changes for fear I could lose the enormous amount of important data on it.

What would cause this--it worked fine in Windows 7 for months until suddenly it just refused to see this drive--the only USB in the sytem.

I am also seeing lots of other wierd issues like storage Volume in Device Manager with several listings below it Generic volume they are called. Most have yellow exclimations marks indicating a drive issue but what could this pertain to? All this seem to start at the same time.

Any ideas concering this other issue--do you think they are related? Maybe a repair to Windows 7 ugh?

 

jkb242,

I'm pleased it worked. No, I don't know what caused it. Any viruses/malware? Do you have a backup image taken at a "good" time?

 

Brian,

I was unable to check properties or assign any drive letters getting an error that the drive or storage manager is not able to access the drive something about not being up to date with the drive--did not make much sense to me.

So I attempted a repair of Windows 7 but as far as I could see a full repair like that possible in XP is not possible in 7--except for start up issues--so that uncoverd nothing.

I am stumped on this one--I don't want to reinstall Windows 7 and an image won't help since it will create what I have today.

Again, the drive works fine when I boot to XP. It is seen in the device manager of Windows 7 and appears normal but it has no drive letter assigned in the disk manager routeen and can't be accessed in disk manager as I reported. I have Paragon Partition Manager but I am reluctant to try something like that with such a low level issue in the OS.

Any suggestions as a next step?

 

jkb242,

I saw something similar on two laptops (from the same household, same model) recently. USB flash drive were not seen in Windows XP but were seen in Disk Management. There were problems accessing DOS boot disks too which puts it out of the OS as a problem. No clever ideas I'm afraid. Can you use DOS CDs?

http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/fixes.htm

Try the dsrfix.zip on this web page. Download, unzip, burn DSRFIXCD.ISO with ImgBurn. Boot from this CD and type DE at the A:\> prompt. Press Enter and click OK for HD 1. If you see a lot of ?? you are in trouble. This is a disk read problem. Both of the above laptops had this problem.

If it is a similar issue, another install of Win7 might not fix it. Keep us informed.

 

What does this image file do when it is run?

Remember that it does not appear to be the drive since it works fine in XP. I too have been reading lots of complaints of very recently beginning in the early summer of this year with almost the identical problem. Worked for a while in Window 7 then stopped. WD has no clue yet it seems.

I found updated Nvidia chipset drivers for Widows 7 64 bit and tried that but no differnce. I also tried to connect the drive with firewire and still no differnce. It is connected on the same bus as an external Sony DVD burner and the DVD is fine but the WD is not to be found. This is really crummy and I too don't feel a reinstall will fix it but I do have two spare HD's in my system that I could easily install Windows 7 on and take a look. I think that will be myh next step---stand by for this test--tomorrow for sure.

Again much thanks--hang in there with me please-----

 

It won't do anything to your computer. I'm a late convert to DOS and the CD contains lots of useful test and fix apps. I love it. DE is Disk Editor. As long as you only look, it will not harm your HD.

I hope you get an answer soon. Noticing the DOS problem on my friends' computers was a chance finding. Maybe both CD drives were faulty. Maybe both HDs were faulty. My friends don't care. They just look at their email every few days.

 

UPDATE*******UPDATE*********

Brian I cut my teeth on DOS--I am very comfortable with it. Thanks for that suggestion. Disk Editor is one I did not recall. I have used the repair console on the XP disk numerous times--and while I prefer to let windows do the reparing, ther are times when that does not work forcing the use of the command console.

Here are the results of the new Windows 7 install to a different drive with NO motherboard chipset drivers loaded, just RC 7600 first time boot. The WD USB drive was recognized! My system is a Dell (Hell, more appropriately) 630i that usese the Nvidia chipset--not thrilled about that either--but this test shows that it would appear that it is not motherboard/chipset related since no drivers were installed--only what is native to Windows 7. It also shows, again in my case, that it is not the drive working in Windows 7, but that was known before hand, in spite of comments from WD posted on the net.

This seems to be more of problem related to system files being over-written at some point that causes this issue. That would explain why Windows 7 initially works with the USB drive then stops later. That is a very previlent, highly reported issue. In XP the old "repair" utility (second repair option presented at upon booting to the XP CD) would have likely fixed this issue if it were occuring in XP. Since this is Windows 7, there is no such repair other than to fix start-up issues of which this is not.

The two choices when boothing to the Windows 7 DVD are "new or re-install" and "upgrade". I would think the upgrade would fix this as well since it leaves all user files in place but essentially copies all system files of the upgrade to the boot drive. I have not tried this yet but it could be the most direct and quickest solution to what appears to be a very ellusive difficult problem to address. My feeling is that the "upgrade" will recognize that the existing sytem, to be upgraded, is identical to the one on the DVD and it will hault.

As to any corruption issue--I would hope the Windows 7 would not allow this but it appears it must. I highly doubt the following is relvent but I had installed Paragon's Disk Manager 2009 in the last few days because I did not believe the fragmentation report from Windows 7 that NONE of my drives need defraging. I knew better an booting to XP confirmed that. That is really troublesome considering that Windows 7 is suppose to be way beyond these basis system issues--and it's obiously not. You have to wonder now how good then is the wonder of Windows 7? Is it an over-hyped prematurely released product? At any rate, I never could get Paragon to do any defrag tasks on any dirves. It wanted to call a reboot for every task so that it could perform it low level before the sytem loaded--good, I understand that but it never ran the defrag routeen--just booted back to Windows 7. With that, I un-installed it but it only resided on the fixed drive not the WD USB and I never asked it to even check the WD USB drive.

That is the only most recent change to my system when I noticed that the WD drive was no longer recognized. Prehaps Paragon was permitted to over-write a system file that actually caused this issue. I am pretty sure that even after removing Paragon, the WD was still being seen by the system.

Any additional thought or suggestions from you or the group based on what has been reported here and the results of the clean install of Windows 7 would be much appreciated!!

I hope to hear back as to some other course of action to resolve this as I have no faith at all in any long term assurance this won't happen again EVEN IF I RELOAD WINDOWS 7!

Much thanks!!

 

jkb242,

Good. You have excluded a hardware issue with the fresh Win7 install but it is speculation as to what went wrong with the drive. I don't have any clever thoughts. Please keep us informed of your progress.

Very worrying.

 

Same problem here with all my external drives. It's happening the last 2-3 days.
Do not know if it is related but the only programs installed during that period were Acronis Home, Paragon 10 free and Panda Cloud AV.

Panagiotis

 

Check this site out:

http://i.nconspicuo.us/2009/02/05/w...g-external-hard-drive-western-digital-mybook/

Possible Solution:

http://windows7tips.us/USB_Problem.htm

 

Aren't forums great for exchanging information! Thanks.

 

I tried the hot fix link information that was provided by TGell. Thanks for that very interesting read. I tried the hotfix but it could not run stating my OS was not compatible?? I have Win 7 64 bit RC 7600 How could it not be. More beta testing needed on this "not so hotfix".

Here is what I did to resolve the USB drive not being seen by Win 7 ---or so it seems for now--nothing's permanent with W7, it seems.

Assuming one is able to access Windows 7 normally, insert the Win 7 DVD, open the disk and click on setup--run setup and select UPGRADE even though the installation is not being upgraded, it reloads all the drivers and system files without affecting the current user files or programs--like the repair in XP.

Caution is advised, if you select CUSTOM instead of UPGRADE- it's goodbye everything! A new copy of Win 7 will be installed replacing the former one and all programs and files will be lost.

At reboot, the UDB drive was still not found but power cycling the USB drive forced Win 7 to find it. At lease in my case--there are many different behaviours repoted with this issue. Power cycling or tricking the OS is a pathetic work-around but even this didn't work prior to the UPGRADE step above.

When the system hybernates, the drive may be lost again (at least in my case) when the system recovers but when I power cycled the drive it is once again found.

I supposed if one wanted to disable hybernation, and leave everything on 24/7, this may prevent at least one power cycle.

As I said pathetic solution but at least the drive is back and useable where as nothing else worked and the drive was NEVER found by the OS.

Hope this helps others.

 

I think it must be reported to MS.

 

In the Technet thread on this hotfix one of the posters had the same problem. When he browsed to the download using the 64 bit version of IE he got the correct hotfix. As you've probably already noticed, Windows 7 64 bit has two IEs.

 

Thanks for that, i was just about to reformat Win7 for the "third" time in a month due to problems.. But i might try this instead.

Next major problem with 7 and my XP partition is going to gain 250GB of space, so last chance for 7.