USB hard drive problem

[Lindsay]

I've been using a USB hard drive for some time now. It's a laptop drive in a
USB caddy. Yesterday, I took it over to my sisters to transfer some data to
her pc. We both run XP Pro. When I got back home and plugged it into my
machine and then start the computer up, Windows stays on the "Windows is
starting..." screen until I unplug the USB drive. With Windows running, if I
plug the USB drive in, My Computer hangs, as does Device Manager. So I
unplugged it, started Device Manager, plugged the USB drive in, and both the
hard drive and the mass storage device showed up without any problems. I
uninstalled the hard drive and then uninstalled the mass storage device.
Rescanned for new hardware, and voila!, the drive functions normally and I
can access it through My Computer. But if I restart my machine, the problem
re-appears.

Any ideas?

 

[Anza]

Hi Lindsay
Does your USB drive have a driver CD that came with it?
If so .... is it installed?

If not you may need to look it up on the internet and download a new
driver for it.

Good Luck
Anza

 

[Stevo]

A new driver should do the trick, but if
it doesn't, look on the hard drive for any files that look like
system files and list them. When you transferred files you might
have grabbed a few system files. Windows will try to read them like
a boot disk.

Stevo

 

[Lindsay]

It can't anything to do with system files. If so, why do I have a problem
plugging it in when Windows is already running. The drivers are installed as
it shows up in Device Manager. I only transferred data FROM the drive and
not TO it. As for installing new drivers, it's made no difference and there
aren't any new drivers.

 

[PopS]

It can't anything to do with system files. If so, why do I have
a problem plugging it in when Windows is already running. The
drivers are installed as it shows up in Device Manager. I only
transferred data FROM the drive and not TO it. As for
installing new drivers, it's made no difference and there
aren't any new drivers.

That would ONLY be a problem if you were using the USB drive as a
boot drive, which it doesn't sound like you are. IFF it were a
boot drive, then windows -might- look on it for some files, but
.... that would be the onlyh way.
I doubt that's an issue.

Pop

 

[Lindsay]

Actually, upon further inspection, it looks like my 3year old hitachi drive
is about to have complete failure. Another drive on the same USB caddy works
fine, and I'm having trouble getting at some of my data. In the process of
backing it up now. Thanks for all ideas/help everyone gave.