Can't find driver for WDC USB/IEEE Ext drive

[rob]

WinXP SP1 (and updated since) cannot find a driver for a
WDC 120 GB Ext drive (combo USB2/IEEE) on my Athlon 1.33
GHZ machine with an MSI motheboard and Via controller. I
have a Micro Innovations PCI/USB2 card which seems to
work OK, and the drive didn't install on the USB1.1
computer port either. WDC says it has no drivers
available since Microssoft wrote them and provides them
in WinXP. Their only suggestion was a complete reinstall
of WInXP to make sure the driver is in the database!

The drive installed and worked fine on my laptop, even
though it was plugged into a USB 1.1 port.

If I had the driver file I could force WinXP to load it,
but MS will not allow anyone to download or provide their
drivers. I read once about a trick of almost re-
installing WinXP to update your drivers then stopping
before you overwrite the whole system. Anyone remember
that trick? Or does someone have some way to get at the
drivers? I spent 4 hours trying to find help on the MS
support site.

I will have to return this great drive because of this
stupid proprietary driver issue unless someone can help.
Thanks. Rob

 

[PaulM]

It called a Repair.
How to Perform an In-Place Upgrade (Reinstallation) (Repair) of Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;315341

 

[Lawrence]

Hi... hope it's not too late to help....

According to http://www.wdc.com/en/library/usb/2079-001033-000.pdf

With your PC already on,
1) You simply plug the USB cable into your USB2 port
2) Plug in the power cord to your very cool-looking drive
3) Plug the other end of your USB cable into said drive
4) You wait for Windows to detect that a new device has connected....

Then you follow the prompts to install a USB MASS STORAGE DEVICE (at least
you know what type of device it is that Windows XP expects to load - so you
could try to 'force' it)

Afterwards, you reboot, and you *should see WBC USB2 available in My
Computer.

Gee, I wish I could see that on My computer.

Good luck,
-Lawrence in Seattle

 

[Rob]

It's NEVER too late to help What you describe is what
is supposed to happen (and did on my newer laptop). I end
up with an unidentied USB/IEEE device and no driver when
installing on my desktop. It is a really cool drive
though, I used it in Firewire mode on my laptop and could
back it up in minutes. I'll try the repair suggestion.

 

[Lawrence]

But wait... there's one more thing to check......

My motherboard's BIOS has settings to enable USB 2.0 compliance, USB1.0
legacy, etc...... does yours?
Maybe all you need to do is check (and presumably enable) USB 2.0

I use AMI Bios... to get to mine, I tap the Delete-key while booting...
yours may be different... check your Manual or your mobo's web site for
details....

Good luck,
-Lawrence in Seattle