Vista Tutorial - USB external hdd will not initialize (find) at startup

I have always had the above problem, from XP, XP Professional and now
Vista Home Premium. Unplugging the drive and plugging it in again
fixes the problem. This problem has occurred with 2 different laptops
and a desktop, and with 3 different usb external disk drives. Just to
further confuse the issue, over the last couple of weeks a usb hdd on
the wife's laptop (Presario running XP Home) after being turned on for
about an hour 'suddenly' recognises the hdd. Tried to find a solution
on the web but have been unsuccessful. Can anyone help please?

It seems to be a common problem with no real solution. A workaround is to
turn the external USB drive off until after Windows has booted. On the
occasions that the drive isn't recognized during boot up (unknown device is
installed instead), I see in UVCview that the USB port the hard drive is
connected to has failed to initialize properly and isn't working. The port
resets to normal after turning off the harddrive or unplugging it from the
USB port.

It doesn't seem to matter which port the drive is plugged into, happens
anywhere. I got the impression it happens more frequently if USB1.1 devices
are connected to the same root hub.


"paabrown" <isbrown@xxxxxx> wrote in message
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