After a format and complete reinstall of XP, I plugged in my USB external
hard drive. The expected notifications appeared in the taskbar area telling
me that new hardware had been found and that it had been installed and was
ready to use. However, neither My Computer nor Windows Explorer showed the
drive. Thus, the drive is unusable.

Is there anything I can do about this?

BTW: the drive was accessible and working before the reinstall.

Thanks for replying.

Yes, I did. In addition, I updated XP through Microsoft Update.

There was something else that I should have mentioned. I used Partition
Magic to delete what had been a single HTFS partition, intending to establish
a fresh FAT32 partition. This action may have gone astray, as I couldn't
complete the task.



"Rich Barry" wrote:

> Did you reinstall XP SP2?
> "Sleepless in New Jersey" <(E-Mail Removed)>
> wrote in message news8A1F8DC-5821-42B5-B517-(E-Mail Removed)...
> > After a format and complete reinstall of XP, I plugged in my USB external
> > hard drive. The expected notifications appeared in the taskbar area
> > telling
> > me that new hardware had been found and that it had been installed and was
> > ready to use. However, neither My Computer nor Windows Explorer showed
> > the
> > drive. Thus, the drive is unusable.
> >
> > Is there anything I can do about this?
> >
> > BTW: the drive was accessible and working before the reinstall.
>
>
>