External USB Hard Drive not working, Vista asking for drivers

[Paul Walker]

I have a 500gb Lacie USB 2.0 External Hard Drive and I am trying to
get it to work with a new Dell Laptop with Windows Vista Ultimate
installed.

Vista recognises the hardware when plugged in. The add new hardware
dialog comes up asking for installation of drivers. The drive works
flawlwessly in XP and has been tested on other Vista Laptop's and
works flawlessly. In these cases the OS does not ask for any drivers.

I have tried the INFCACHE.1 fix. This allowed the hardware to be
listed in Hardware manager as correctly installed and working. I could
access the drive (formated NTFS) and copy/copy from it. However
Vista was still asking for a driver to be installed. I cancelled this
and could still access the drive ok.

Once I unplugged the drive however I was back to square one.
Vista reclassified the drive as other devices and yellow exclamation
mark. On boot up Vista asks for the device driver.

Paul,

 

[Richard Urban]

Some USB devices may use special drivers to try to get optimum performance
out of the device. I don't know if LaCie is one of these. Many other devices
use the drivers supplied by the O/S and work fine.

I have a Maxtor external drive that will not work with Windows 98. Yet I can
use my 500 gig drive (installed in a case made by Adaptec) on Windows 98
just fine. This is one of the reasons I highly recommend Adaptec products.
They just work!

Check with the drive manufacturer to see if your external drive needs these
special drivers. Then get the Vista drivers you need.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

 

[Paul Walker]

Lacie like other USB 2.0 External drive manufacturers offer no
drivers, only for Win98 which is understandable.

The drive is detected and works on other vista systems. I have
Vista Ultimate. I am well aware that threre appears to be a lot of
people with the exact same issue. I have worked through the
suggestions but upto now nothing has worked.

Paul,

 

[John Lee Brown]

When it asks for the driver where do you tell it the driver is? Next time
tell it that you want to tell it where the drivers are and enter
C:\Windows\System32\drivers, this has worked for me.

 

[f/fgeorge]

When it asks for the driver where do you tell it the driver is? Next time
tell it that you want to tell it where the drivers are and enter
C:\Windows\System32\drivers, this has worked for me.

Just using C:\Windows has worked for alot of people too.

 

[Paul Walker]

RE :

Point driver installer to either

C:\Windows\System32\drivers

C:\Windows

I will give these a go and report back.

Thanks

Paul.

 

[Guest]

RE :

Point driver installer to either

C:\Windows\System32\drivers

C:\Windows

I will give these a go and report back.

Thanks

Paul.

I am having the EXACT same problem with the same drive. I tried pointing
Windows to System32\drivers to locate the drivers but it did not find any.
I also have similar problems for a number of USB flash drives. I have 4 in
total, and have only been able to get one of them to work. Even the flash
drives belonging to my colleagues don't get recognized by Vista on my machine.

I too have Vista Ultimate and am experiencing the same issues. Please Help!!

Ali R

 

[Cal Bear '66]

This solution has worked for some people with problematic USB devices:

Locate the file INFCACHE.1 in C:\Windows\inf

Right click on the INFCACHE.1 file, select Properties >Security > Edit, and give
your account full control.

Delete INFCACHE.1, or rename it to INFCACHE.1.BAK or temporarily move to your
desktop.

REBOOT

If this works for you, you can delete the INFCACHE.1 file. Windows will not
recreate it.


I Bleed Blue and Gold
GO BEARS!

 

[Guest]

I gave this a shot and it didn't work either. Presents the same problem as
before.

any other suggestions? I'm especially confused as to why (according to the
initial post) this would work on SOME Vista machines, but not ALL Vista
machines.

Ali R

 

[Cal Bear '66]

Is this of any help:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;937187


I Bleed Blue and Gold
GO BEARS!

 

[Guest]

I tried the hotfix.
When I plug in my USB HD, I no longer get the message that driver is not
found, checking online for a driver etc.
HOWEVER, the device is still NOT RECOGNIZED by Vista. In Device Manager, it
still has a yellow caution symbol next to the device, and the drive does not
show up in My Computer.

Any other suggestions? I'm seriously considering downgrading back to
Windows XP as a result of this. This is NOT the first time that this has
happened. I have the same problem with MANY of the USB Flash Drives I use
too, rendering them useless to me.

Not sure what the problem is, but this is definitely not acceptable from an
OS. As much as I like the new look & feel, and new functionality of Vista,
I'm really left with no choice but to go back to XP so that I can use my
peripherals etc., unless there is still a way to fix this situation.

 

[JW]

Are you connecting the USB drives directly to computer or to a USB hub? If
not it may be the HUB driver that is the problem.

Also you might try the following Hot fix.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;936003

 

[Guest]

Yes, I tried connecting directly to the computer. Also, that hotfix you
suggest is not intended for the problem that I'm experiencing. I did see a
hotfix for the problem that I am experiencing, but that also did not work.

Other suggestions?? Really on the brink of switching back to XP if I can't
resolve this soon.

 

[Richard Urban]

Gee. Why not just get an external drive case that will use the default
drivers in Vista correctly. All cases are NOT equal! The electronic IDE to
USB interface within the case may not be designed correctly or may, in fact,
be defective.

I have an external Maxtor that will not work with Vista. I'll be damned if I
am going back to XP because of it. I just use my 500 gig Seagate hard drive
that is mounted in my Adaptec external box. I have not found a single
instance where it will not function as it is supposed to.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

 

[Guest]

Oridnarilly I'd agree with you to some extent. However I experience the same
problem when I plug in a large number of different USB flash drives. Of the
3 flash drives I own, my Vista only recognizes one. All 3 were detected with
no additional drivers back when I had XP. In addition, I've tried all of the
flash drives my friends own and NONE of those have worked either. From the
no name brands, right up to the Kingston and Sony.

For that reason, I don't think it's a problem with my HD itself, but rather
something related to Vista's interraction with the USB jacks.

Ali

 

[Richard Urban]

What services have you possibly turned off to "save" resources? Have you
disconnected all other USB devices and then tried your USB drive in various
other ports, rebooting in between tests?

I have a scanner that is "very" selective about which USB port it is
connected to. It is NOT Vista! It is the hardware implementation of the M/B
and the ports interaction with Vista. What works with XP had to be changed
physically to function with Vista. Is it a Vista problem in my case? NO! NO!
NO! I have another computer with the same M/B that does ***NOT*** exhibit
the same problems. - this on a clean install. On one computer the scanner
works in a certain port. On the other computer - nothing.

I shut down both computers and switched M/B's. The problem transferred to
the computer that showed no problem previously. Yes. It took me a few hours
to perform this check but no big deal. I am retired and have plenty of free
time.

On further checking I found that there were vastly different resistance
readings from that particular USB ports pins - to ground - when the two
computers were compared electrically.

There is so much you can do in troubleshooting. That is why a good tech gets
more per hour than a poor tech (usually). (-:

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

 

[Guest]

So I FINALLY solved my problem! I sent a request to the HD manufacturer,
Lacie, and they solved my problem on their first shot!! I was rather
impressed, seeing how much back & forth was going on here.

Anyway, in my case, the problem was a missing usbstor.inf file under the
C:\Windows\Inf folder. I just searched my computer for it, copied to the
Windows\Inf directory, and voila, everything works! Even all the USB flash
drives that weren't working initially are all functional now.

If anyone else is having a similar problem with their USB devices, I suggest
they try this quick fix first.

Ali

 

[jetkaiser]

I've been experiencing the same problem with usb storage devices for
the last few weeks and have visited numerous forums discussing it.
After having no joy I decided to take a look around my system folders
and have now got these devices working again. While looking around I
discovered 2 points of interest:

1. In C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository I had two folders
named "usbstor.inf" but each one had a different set of numbers
attached to the end of the folder name. - could this be where part of
the problem lies?
2. When i looked in my C:\Windows\inf folder i discovered the
usbstor.inf and usb stor.pnf files were missing - this definitely had
to be an issue.
Once I discovered these anomalies, I proceeded to copy the pnf and inf
files from the most recently updated usbstor.inf folder to C:\Windows
\inf. I then went back to the update driver wizard, pointed to the inf
folder and what do you know but they all started working again.

Worked for me!
Hope this helps.

..::HERPETON::.

 

[JimV]

I tried all of the items listed below and above, all to no avail. PNY, the
mfr., didn't have any answers that worked, either.

 

[Zingaro]

Hi, I have the same problem with my lacie 500gig drive on Vista Pro. However,
I could not find the file USBSTOR.INF on my computer. Where can I get this
file?
Thanks Rolf