Windows 2000 won't detect WD USB-powered HDD

[Dr. O'Boogie]

I cannot get my Windows 2000 PC to detect a Western Digital Passport
USB-powered external HDD. It's supposed to be plug and play. My system
detects an external USB device but begins the wizard to install a driver, and
there is no driver available. I called WD tech support and was told to update
to Windows 2000 SP4. I told them my system has all updates, including SP4, so
they told me to re-install SP4. I did this last night and it cause my system
to crash. Fortunately, I anticipated problems and was able to restore my
system from a backup.

The USB ports I use are on an Adeptec USB PCI adapter card, which I added
several years ago to upgrade to USB 2.0. I never use the USB 1 ports on my
Intel motherboard. I've never had any problem with Windows detecting a USB
device with the Adaptec USB card, including card readers, AC-powered USB
HDD's, DVD burners, etc. Also, my daughter has a Windows 2000 PC with almost
the same configuration as mine, and her PC detects the WD Passport fine.
Since I've tried using the WD Passport, it's caused my mouse to freeze up
several times, resulting in a K-Mode stop error on re-boot. I tried
connecting the Passport HDD to the one of the USB 1 ports on the motherboard,
which detected the WD software on the Passport HDD and appeared was going to
work, but the system had to be re-booted and on re-boot I got the K-Mode stop
error. Every time I've gotten the K-Mode error, the system eventually
re-boots normally after turning it off and unplugging the power cord for
several hours.

After the attempt of using the USB 1 port, the system didn't detect the
drive on re-boot, and I'm hesitant to attempt it again. I doubt calling WD
tech support again will help at all. I know I have autorun disabled on my
system, but supposedly that shouldn't matter. All my USB connections show as
working properly in Device Manager. This morning I re-installed the Adeptec
USB card drivers, the most recent one available on their web site (released
12-6-02), and it didn't change anything.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

[MtPhishPhan]

I have been having the exact same problem on 2 different Windows 2000
Servers. I believe it to be a power issue. On one computer the problem was
fixed by adding a powered usb hub. On the other this did not work so we
switched first to a full sized powered usb external drive and then to a 1.5"
form factor drive which required less power. Both options worked but the
there are obvious size and travel advantages to the 1.5" drive.

Post by Dr. O'Boogie
I cannot get my Windows 2000 PC to detect a Western Digital Passport
USB-powered external HDD. It's supposed to be plug and play. My system
detects an external USB device but begins the wizard to install a driver, and
there is no driver available. I called WD tech support and was told to update
to Windows 2000 SP4. I told them my system has all updates, including SP4, so
they told me to re-install SP4. I did this last night and it cause my system
to crash. Fortunately, I anticipated problems and was able to restore my
system from a backup.
The USB ports I use are on an Adeptec USB PCI adapter card, which I added
several years ago to upgrade to USB 2.0. I never use the USB 1 ports on my
Intel motherboard. I've never had any problem with Windows detecting a USB
device with the Adaptec USB card, including card readers, AC-powered USB
HDD's, DVD burners, etc. Also, my daughter has a Windows 2000 PC with almost
the same configuration as mine, and her PC detects the WD Passport fine.
Since I've tried using the WD Passport, it's caused my mouse to freeze up
several times, resulting in a K-Mode stop error on re-boot. I tried
connecting the Passport HDD to the one of the USB 1 ports on the motherboard,
which detected the WD software on the Passport HDD and appeared was going to
work, but the system had to be re-booted and on re-boot I got the K-Mode stop
error. Every time I've gotten the K-Mode error, the system eventually
re-boots normally after turning it off and unplugging the power cord for
several hours.
After the attempt of using the USB 1 port, the system didn't detect the
drive on re-boot, and I'm hesitant to attempt it again. I doubt calling WD
tech support again will help at all. I know I have autorun disabled on my
system, but supposedly that shouldn't matter. All my USB connections show as
working properly in Device Manager. This morning I re-installed the Adeptec
USB card drivers, the most recent one available on their web site (released
12-6-02), and it didn't change anything.
Does anyone have any suggestions?

[BHunsaker]

We just finished diagnosing a problem with a WD MyBook USB drive on Windows
2000. It had been working for months when suddenly it died with the event
log showing paging problems. After rebooting the system, the drive was no
longer detected. It did, however, work on other systems.

We tried clearing the list of previously detected USB disks, confirmed that
other USB flash and hard drives worked, etc. The problem turned out to be
the power brick. We swapped one from a different MyBook and all is well.

[Paul]

Hi,

I had similar problems with my WD External USB Harddrive with Windows 2000
and also have a similar setup to yours. My motherboard is an old Tyan S1832
with built-in USB 1.0 ports. I needed more ports and wanted USB 2.0 so
purchased an ULTRA 6 port (4Ext/2Int) PCI USB 2.0 card specifically to use
with the WD USB HDD for faster data transfer.

Had no problems installing the card. Had major problems getting W2K to
recognize the drive when it was plugged into the card's USB ports. Windows
would initially detect the drive, the drive would light up, it would show on
the system tray for like a second, then it would shut down and the the PnP
hardware indicator would vanish. Nothing under My Computer and nothing under
Disk Management in Computer Management. I also had similar problems with
SanDisk USB Thumb drives.

After much hours wasted trying to get it to work and researching the web I
finally figured out the issue. When you install a PCI USB card its drivers
usually create their own Device Manager USB Controller entry. This is the
root of the problem.

Although the HDD was plugged into the PCI card's USB ports Windows would
still lay claim to the drive and link it to the USB Controllers managed by
Windows itself instead of the USB Controllers managed by the card. This makes
sense since the card doesn't come with drivers to manage mass storage
devices, Windows does. Since the hard drive is plugged into the card Windows
is unable to manage it (power, data transfer, etc).

To solve the problem I uninstalled the PCI USB driver from Device Manager
for the card and installed the one supplied by Windows. To do this,
right-click on the entry for the card under its Universal Serial Bus
Controllers entry, click on Properties then on the Driver tab and then click
on Update Driver. Select "Search for a suitable driver..." when prompted and
click Next. Click on Specify a Location, click Next and select the WINNT
directory under the C: drive and click OK. Windows will search and present a
finding. Click on Install one of the other drivers checkbox and click on
Next. Windows will then prompt you with a list of device drivers. Select
the "Standard Enhanced PCI to USB Host Controller" driver that is supplied by
Windows instead of the driver that comes with the card. If the card is truly
a USB compliant card (just about all are these days) the generic driver
supplied by Windows can be used to communicate with it just fine. What will
happen is that you will only have one USB Controllers entry in Device Manager
with several USB Roots for the ports on the card with their associated device
when the install completes.

Now, when you plug in the USB hard drive it should list as USB Mass Storage
under the single USB Controller entry in device manager and should be
properly recognized by Windows.

I hope that helps.