External USB disk

[Guest]

I have just downloaded and installed the final release of Vista from MSDN.
After installing, none of my external usb mass storage devices are
recognized. I have never needed any device driver for these drives in xp, and
the manufactor (maxtor) only release device driver for mac-os and windows 98.
Vista doesn't recognice any of by usb-hub's either. What is the problem with
vista and usb devices? Does anybody have a solution for this?

 

[Paul Smith]

I have just downloaded and installed the final release of Vista from MSDN.
After installing, none of my external usb mass storage devices are
recognized. I have never needed any device driver for these drives in xp,
and
the manufactor (maxtor) only release device driver for mac-os and windows
98.
Vista doesn't recognice any of by usb-hub's either. What is the problem
with
vista and usb devices? Does anybody have a solution for this?

Sounds like Vista doesn't have drivers for your USB controller, or they have
failed to load. Check in the device manager to see if you have any unknown
or devices that failed to start and try updating the drivers.

--
Paul Smith,
Yeovil, UK.
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User.
http://www.windowsresource.net/
Get ready for Windows Vista: http://www.windowsvista.com/getready/

*Remove nospam. to reply by e-mail*

 

[Guest]

It sees two of my external USB drives but not my flash drive connected thru a
usb 2.0 multiplier\hub.

 

[Chris H]

is this an external USB hub? If so, check and make sure your USB port on the
computer is 2.0. I dont know if they all automatically throttle down or just
dont work when plugged in to a USB 1.1 port

 

[Guest]

My motherboard is an ASUS A8N-SLI DELUXE, with only usb 2.0 ports. I have
allso checked the device manager, and found the usb hard disk as "unknown
device". Tried updating the device driver but nothing seemes to help. One of
the hard drives I have problems connecting is a Maxtor OneTouch, that's usb
2.0 compatible.

 

[John Barnes]

Did they work on prior versions of Vista. Are you using Vista86 or 64?

 

[Guest]

This is the first version of Vista I have installed, and it's the x86 version.

 

[Guest]

I am having the exact same issue. All of my USB storage devices (flash disk,
camera, etc) have stopped working since I installed Windows Vista RTM. They
used to work when I last tested RC1. I have an ASUS A8N-SLI Premium board
(nforce 4). The USB controllers show up fine in Device Manager, but each USB
storage device I put it fails to load the driver.

This is very aggrevating, does anybody have a solution? I've tried
re-installing the drivers and also changing some of the limited USB bios
settings, and nothing seems to work.

 

[Jeppe]

I have the same problem with my IPOD which is seen as a USB device. The
1 thing we all have in common is I too am using an Asus A8N32-SLI. On
another note the maxtor one touches don't work with vista, I contacted
them the drivers will be out shortly.

Same problem here too. No usb stick, external hard disk will work.

NForce 3 mainboard here. Everything worked fine within XP (and still works).

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

It sounds like the hub is not compatible with Vista. There are usb devices
out there that don't work with Vista, including some hard drive enclosures.
The problem is never with the drives, just some enclosures.

 

[Roy Coorne]

Same problem here too. No usb stick, external hard disk will work.

NForce 3 mainboard here. Everything worked fine within XP (and still
works)

....and will work fine within Vista Service Pack 1 (hopefully - or SP2;-)



rOy

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

It sounds like a group policy is in place that is causing this.

 

[Michael Price]

There are also issue with certain motherboards with nVidia chipsets and USB
devices.

 

[Guest]

I agree. I came here to see if there were answers for this problem and I see
more post of I have the same problem than anything. Some common factors
appear to be ASUS mbs, AMD processors with the Nividia Chipset.

I have an ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe with AMD 4400+ Dual Core, 3 gig RAM. I
originally installed the 64 bit version of Vista and then switched to the
32bit version thinking that might be the problem, same deal. I have a USB
printer. During install of the printer Vista never recognizes when it was
plugged in, when I plug in my PNY 1 gig flash drive it errors and gives the
unreconized deveice error. I have two other exteranal USB Hard drives, 1 2
1/2 drive with dual USB plug is not recognized at all, the 3 1/2 drive is
recognized installed but never accessable.

I have my system set to where I can boot to Vista or XP. Boot to XP
everything works, boot to Vista none of it works.

As many post as there are on this problem you would think we could get a
patch or something to fix the problem.

Sorry to ramble but I have dealing with this for a long time.

 

[Guest]

One thing I can now add to this, earlier I read in here something about the
amount of RAM, I decreased my amount of RAM from 3 gig to 2 gig, and now the
USB RAM drives work. Printer does not but that is another issue by itself,
printer is old and no compatable drivers but it does recognize when it is
plugged in though. I am not sure if the problem was with the amout of RAM
being 3 gig or if it was the fact that I 2 1gig and 2 512 sticks, when I
removed the 2 512 sticks it worked.

 

[Erik Funkenbusch]

One thing I can now add to this, earlier I read in here something about the
amount of RAM, I decreased my amount of RAM from 3 gig to 2 gig, and now the
USB RAM drives work. Printer does not but that is another issue by itself,
printer is old and no compatable drivers but it does recognize when it is
plugged in though. I am not sure if the problem was with the amout of RAM
being 3 gig or if it was the fact that I 2 1gig and 2 512 sticks, when I
removed the 2 512 sticks it worked.

Yes, the problem is related to the nVidia nForce chipsets and > 2GB of RAM.
My guess is that the nVidia chipsets cannot DMA into memory above 2GB and
this was never a problem in earlier versions of Windows, Vista's USB driver
appears to make use of memory above 2GB if you have it, and that screws up
the chipsets.