External USB Drive issues
- From: Julian <jmensch@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 03 May 2005 16:06:36 GMT
Hello,
I've just installed Windows 2003 Server academic
edition on my laptop in order to study and learn Active
Directory and other administration issues. To do this,
I reformatted my system, backing everything up to a 250
GB external USB disc.
Anyway, when I start my new 2003 installation, every-
thing works great -- I can read all my data on the USB
drive normally, and it auto-detects the instant that it
is plugged in.
Predictably, my system has only been active for about
four minutes before a msblast virus-variant brings it
low, so I quickly hurry to shut off DCOM and apply the
patch. While I'm at it, being a sensible sysadmin, I do
a full Windows Update, and I also load the Daemon Tools
virtual CD-ROM emulator so that I can access an ISO-
image full of admin tools I have on my USB drive.
Bang! I can't get at my USB drive at all anymore. I'm
not sure what in the above procedure was the cause -- it
was a little hectic with my system shutting down after
three minutes every time trying to find the right patch.
The first suspect was D-Tools, so I took that off right
away, but I still can't get at the USB drive in any way.
The USB disc still works great when I plug it into a
different computer running XP, and all the data is intact.
When I plug it into the 2003 laptop, the plug-and-play
system recognises it instantly, and a "USB Mass Storage
Device" shows up in the device manager, but there's no
drive or drive letter.
So try Disk Management, right? It clearly "sees" the
drive, because it registers the USB disc as present and
even tells me the correct size (238 GB). However, the
chart that lists the file system just comes up blank
instead of listing "NTFS" like it does for the HDD or
"CDFS" for the CD-ROM. When I try to bring up the
Properties window for the drive or otherwise look at
it, Disk Management just fails to bring up a window as
I choose Properties from the menu. I'm very reluctant
to do anything else with DM, as I have no easy way to
back up a 250-GB drive, and it has all my data.
I've tried rebooting the computer and the drive, and
uninstalling the device drivers for everything USB-
related and forcing Windows to put them back manually.
No luck. If nothing else works, I might just reformat
and try again -- but I'd really like to avoid that.
My laptop is a Dell Inspiron 8200. There are no other
USB devices on the system, and very little else of
anything unusual, since it's a clean format. I did not
install 2003 Service Pack 1, but I did install every-
thing else that Windows Update offered. I also had to
repair the installation using the Win2003 CD after the
virus di something to LSASS.EXE, rendering it unable
to boot.
Any suggestions are welcome, even if all you can
give is a pointer to an in-depth FAQ for troubleshooting
USB drives under Win32.
Julian
.
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