i have a portable hard drive which when i connect it to my usb i get the little bleep to say the computer has recognised it, but it isnt showing up anywhere for me to actually connect to. normally i can go to 'my computer' and it has appeared there for me to view but not always, does anyone know why this or how can resolve it please. this has also happend quite a lot in the past when i had a portable usb pen drive.

any help appreciated

have you tried rebooting with the external drive connected.....

Hi, does it show in: control panel - administrative tools - computer management - storage - disk management
If so, it may need to be assigned a drive letter, or want partitioning/formatting. (bear in mind, if you want to format it with fat/fat32, Windows 2k/xp only supports 32gig)

If no joy with this, I 'nicked' this from another forum I frequent, its worth a try because sometimes it works.

First step, Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools, System Restore. Create a restore point and name it something like "Before USB Fix". This is to bail you out if something goes wrong during the following process and makes things worse.

Create a file with NOTEPAD containing the following lines and save it as FIX.REG
-------------------------- Use text after this line --------------------------------
REGEDIT4

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment]

"DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES"="1"
-------------------------- Use text before this line --------------------------------

Double click on FIX.REG and say yes to the Merge Into Registry question.

Unplug ALL USB devices.
Open Device Manager.
View, Show Hidden Devices.
Uninstall all devices under USB Controllers.
Uninstall all devices under Disk Drives that you know are not present.
Uninstall all devices under Storage Volumes. Say no to any reboot prompts until you are finished. Also, if a Storage Volume doesn't uninstall, ignore it and move to the next one.
If you have a yellow ? with unknown devices, uninstall all of the entries there as well.

When this is done, reboot TWICE.

Reconnect the USB devices and see if they're recognized properly.

NOTE: If you have a USB keyboard and/or mouse, you'll have to modify the instructions and leave enough parts for those to function. I don't have one yet, so I haven't had time to modify the instructions.



Hope this helps