Hardware changing name! external HD

[Guest]

I have a Amacom external harddrive with a usb connection. This drive is a
hot swap and has worked perfectly with XP Pro for over a year. Normally I
plug it in and it finds the Amacom Drive, now when I plug it in it is finding
a Fujitsu Drive! Once it installs the Fujitsu Drive it then cant connect to
the drive! I have tried installing the Amacom drivers (which I have never
had to do before) but I get a message saying the drivers do not apply to the
fujitsu device!

Is it possible for an external ard drive to suddenly think it his now a
Fujitsu hard drive? Im not sure if its XP or the hard drive. Amacom
advertise the harddrive of being shock proof and capable of dropping 9 feet
onto concrete, I only took it out the case so it cant be the drive can it??

Please help, this drive is my back up devise and has a years worth of photos
on it!

 

[Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

Did you perhaps install any device drivers from Windows Update? This is
usually considered a no-no.

I've never seen this happen with a USB hard drive. You may need to find it
in the registry & remove it & then try to install the correct drivers, or
see if plug&play detects it properly.

Not sure what you mean by "took it out of the case"....what did you do,
exactly?

 

[Guest]

Many thanks for your swift response. When I say toook it out of case I mean
the carry case that holds the drive not the drive case!

What would I need to change in the registry, will the fujitsu drive have an
entry?

After formatting I tried the drive before going to windows update, my system
disk is xp pro with sp1, however I have formatted and re-installed many times
using this disk with no problems.

Cheers

 

[Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

Ah, well, you took it out of the shipping carton. Not supported! <g>

The registry can be a scary place. You'd most likely find your USB drive in
HKLM\system\current control set\enum\usb\..... of course you'd make a backup
by exporting it out to a .reg file on your desktop or somewhere safe, before
changing anything.

Have you tried contacting the USB drive mfr for support first?

 

[Guest]

Thanks for that, If I try and remove from the registry will the drive need to
be plugged in at the time?

I tried to e-mail Amacom support but that was a week ago and no response!

 

[Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

Thanks for that, If I try and remove from the registry will the drive
need to be plugged in at the time?

With it plugged in, take a look at the registry and post what you see in
there...
I think you'll want it unplugged when you remove the 'offending item', tho.
And be careful when editing the registry!