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Old 02-18-2008   #2 (permalink)
Mark L. Ferguson
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Re: Vista is not assigning driver letters to external drives, claiming "Unknown Device"

Write caching may be set wrong, and you are failing to use the "Safely
Remove Hardware" option when needed. (Device Manager, drive properties,
"Policies" tab.)

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Mark L. Ferguson

..
"Michael Faklis" <Michael_Faklis@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:%23n2$P7kcIHA.5348@xxxxxx
Quote:

> My Vista Ultimate laptop stopped assigning driver letters to new external
> drives, whether external hard drives or thumb drives. Old thumb drives I
> used in the past are still recognized. This problem is happening on my
> new
> Western Digital 1 tb external drive, whether using USB 2 or Firewire 400.
> It is also happening on my new SanDisk 8gb U3 thumb drive and a new PNY
> 1gb
> U3 thumb drive.
> When inserted, Vista starts loading driver drivers for the device, but
> then
> claims the drive is an "Unknown Device". For the external hard drive, the
> driver software installation finds the WD My Book USB Device, USB Human
> Interface Device, USB Mass Storage Device, USB Composite Device, and then
> it
> fails to find "Unidentified Device". Device Manger shows the WD My Book
> USB
> Device under disk drives, and also an Unknown device under Other devices.
> Disk Management shows the drive, but without a drive letter. My computer
> shows nothing for this drive.
> All of these drives work fine on my older XP Pro laptop.
> Please tell me why a drive letter is not being assigned to this "Unknown
> Device" and how do I correct this problem.
>
> - Michael Faklis <Michael_Faklis@xxxxxx>
>
>
>
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