B
Bill Llewellyn
I have a dual boot desk top computer with VISTA and XP on separate drives. I
also have an external drive [inside an enclosure].
XP sees all the drives and assigns them letters C D and E. The optical DVD
drive is letter F.
Device manager says usb drive and mass storage is working properly.
The three hard drives all seagate [250gb, 250gb and the external is
160gb ] can be seen in the Bios.
However in VISTA the external hard drive can be seen in disk management and
device manager but NOT IN "computer"
In VISTA the external drive cannot be assigned a letter or formatted [using
disk management . I formatted the drive and assigned a letter in XP, but it
still cannot be seen in "computer" in VISTA.
One other difference in vista is the appearance of "other devices" in the
device manager with an "unknown device" showing. It does not seem possible
to allocate a driver to this unknown device.. I tried disabling and removing
this unknown device but no difference.
I used "seagate disk wizard" to reformat the external drive successfully and
also ran "seatools for windows" to test the external drive - it passed the
short generic test..
The external disk has a driver disk.sys [the same in XP and VISTA]
The mass storage device showing in device manager [usb controllers] has the
driver usbstor.sys [the same in XP and VISTA].
I checked that USBSTOR.INF and PNF and SYS are in c:\windows\inf.
I removed INFCACH.1 from c:\windows\inf and have since replaced it. -no
change
I have tried disabling UAC and running as administrator but no change..
I have tried power cycling and unplugging and reinserting the USB cable -
no change.
I have used several different USB plugs - front of computer and rear of the
computer - no change.
I have tried to change the DISK.SYS driver in VISTA to usbstor.inf. or
usbstor.sys but it does not seem possible??
I would like to get rid of XP but perhaps you CANNOT install an external
drive in VISTA.???
also have an external drive [inside an enclosure].
XP sees all the drives and assigns them letters C D and E. The optical DVD
drive is letter F.
Device manager says usb drive and mass storage is working properly.
The three hard drives all seagate [250gb, 250gb and the external is
160gb ] can be seen in the Bios.
However in VISTA the external hard drive can be seen in disk management and
device manager but NOT IN "computer"
In VISTA the external drive cannot be assigned a letter or formatted [using
disk management . I formatted the drive and assigned a letter in XP, but it
still cannot be seen in "computer" in VISTA.
One other difference in vista is the appearance of "other devices" in the
device manager with an "unknown device" showing. It does not seem possible
to allocate a driver to this unknown device.. I tried disabling and removing
this unknown device but no difference.
I used "seagate disk wizard" to reformat the external drive successfully and
also ran "seatools for windows" to test the external drive - it passed the
short generic test..
The external disk has a driver disk.sys [the same in XP and VISTA]
The mass storage device showing in device manager [usb controllers] has the
driver usbstor.sys [the same in XP and VISTA].
I checked that USBSTOR.INF and PNF and SYS are in c:\windows\inf.
I removed INFCACH.1 from c:\windows\inf and have since replaced it. -no
change
I have tried disabling UAC and running as administrator but no change..
I have tried power cycling and unplugging and reinserting the USB cable -
no change.
I have used several different USB plugs - front of computer and rear of the
computer - no change.
I have tried to change the DISK.SYS driver in VISTA to usbstor.inf. or
usbstor.sys but it does not seem possible??
I would like to get rid of XP but perhaps you CANNOT install an external
drive in VISTA.???