External Hard Drive Not Recognised via USB

Hi there,

I've just bought a Verbatim External Hard Drive - 640GB. When I connect it to my PC [Compaq Presario 5000] using the supplied USB lead, I get the message "USB Device not recognised".

I have tried all the USB ports on the PC and have re-booted several times without any luck.

I attached it to my laptop and it worked within seconds so there's no problem with the hardware.

Any help and advice gratefully received.
Regards
Mark

 

Have you tried any other USB devices on the aging Compaq 5000? You can try installing newer chipset drivers, that might help, or go to Windows Updates, go to the optional hardware updates and see if a newer USB driver is available...

 

What Operating System is on your Presario? Perhaps the size of the new Verbatim External HD is too large to be recognized.

 

Just a heads up for once you get the drive recognized...

I was messing around with my brother's old Presario 5834 last year and it only had USB 1.1 from the motherboard.
You will want to check the specs on your model to see if it has USB 2.0 and perhaps purchase a 2.0 PCI card if you want reasonable data transfer speeds.

 

It sounds like a driver problem...If the Hard drive came with a drivers disk then you should install them, otherwise I would check online for drivers for your device.

 

Thanks everyone,

To answer a couple of the Qs above
- yes, I do use other USB devices (e.g. a CD Drive)
- I'm on Windows XP Home and have SP2 and SP3 installed

I need to ask a really daft question. It seems like I need to find a driver to make this work - is that a Compaq driver or a Verbatim driver (or something else)?

Thanks
Mark

 

Most USB drives don't require drivers since windows 98.
See
http://www.verbatim.com/support/support.cfm?open=Downloads
I'd be more inclined to go to HP, who now owns Compaq and see if there are any BIOS updates. Maybe something in the BIOS is preventing it from seeing a large external hard drive?

You might want to connect to a friend's computer to see if it is recognized, just to rule out a problem with the Verbatim drive.