Assign Drive letter for USB External drive

[TitianLady]

This is a recently arrived problem.
It is happening on all three of my PC's

My two month old Lenovo Notebook 3000, 1GB, XP home
My main box, clone with Gigabyte MB an 2 GB, XP Pro
My dell Dimension 4600, 1 GB, HP Home

I use USB2 / IDE adapters to test / scan hard drives, and USB external Hardrives in enclosures. All has been working
for over a year.

For the past two months or so, I am having problems getting a drive letter assigned. In Device Manager,
- Disk Drives
-- USB Device
....instead of the drive make/model, and no Drive letter is assigned for Explorer.

The "Safely Remove" Icon for removing devices shows:
"Safely remove USB mas storage device"
instead of also showing the drive letter.

Uninstalling the USB controllers and rebooting does not help with the problem.

This problem often (but not consistently) shows up with USB flash drives (Jump drives, etc) Usually reboot helps with
this situation.

With a purchased External USB hard drive, the symptoms _sometimes_ are thus:

First time a drive letter gets assigned. Perform the proper safely Remove hardware" procedure, and later re attach the
USB cable produces the above symptom... no drive letter. Reboot always seems to fix this one.

The drivers shown in Device Manager are
VIA Rev 5 or later USB Universal Host Controller, and
VIA USB Enhanced Host Controller

What to do next?
Could some Windows Update have caused this problem?

How do I approach troubleshooting?

 

[TitianLady]

This is a recently arrived problem.
It is happening on all three of my PC's

My two month old Lenovo Notebook 3000, 1GB, XP home
My main box, clone with Gigabyte MB an 2 GB, XP Pro
My dell Dimension 4600, 1 GB, HP Home

I use USB2 / IDE adapters to test / scan hard drives, and USB external
Hardrives in enclosures. All has been working for over a year.

For the past two months or so, I am having problems getting a drive
letter assigned. In Device Manager,
- Disk Drives
-- USB Device
...instead of the drive make/model, and no Drive letter is assigned for
Explorer.

The "Safely Remove" Icon for removing devices shows:
"Safely remove USB mas storage device"
instead of also showing the drive letter.

Uninstalling the USB controllers and rebooting does not help with the
problem.

This problem often (but not consistently) shows up with USB flash drives
(Jump drives, etc) Usually reboot helps with this situation.

With a purchased External USB hard drive, the symptoms _sometimes_ are
thus:

First time a drive letter gets assigned. Perform the proper safely
Remove hardware" procedure, and later re attach the USB cable produces
the above symptom... no drive letter. Reboot always seems to fix this one.

The drivers shown in Device Manager are
VIA Rev 5 or later USB Universal Host Controller, and
VIA USB Enhanced Host Controller

What to do next?
Could some Windows Update have caused this problem?

How do I approach troubleshooting?

Suspend this problem.
I need to get more information.

I have TWO Vantec STTA/IDE to USB2.0 adapters. One of them seems to have a problem. I will repost NEW when I have more
useful information.

 

[TitianLady]

Suspend this problem.
I need to get more information.

I have TWO Vantec STTA/IDE to USB2.0 adapters. One of them seems to
have a problem. I will repost NEW when I have more useful information.

Using only one known good adapter, one thing is consistent...
that it is inconsistent... mostly failing.
I can't reliable reproduce sequences.
I have tried using Master jumping and Cable Select (preferred).

When it fails to assign a drive letter, it takes the Plug-n-Play routines over two minutes to finally complete, and NO
drive letter assignment, no HD identity determined.

Leave it all disconnected for a long period of time (20 minutes) and plug it in again... and it _may_ work correctly.

It matters not... which system I test with.