Unknown Device?

Hi,

I'm haveing some issue with an external drive. Hopefully someone can help me, cause i don't know what to do...

Yesterday i reinstalled XP. (Steps i used in short: Install XP with SP2, Install chipset drivers, install video card drivers, Run cleanmgr in Safe Mode, Downloaded all High Priority + .net framework and Media Player under Optional in Windows Updates, After Reboot downloaded all High Priority and a few Optional Updates, then run cleanmgr again in Safe Mode,
Opened Device Manager, Audio was marked yellow so i did a automated install for this driver first, because i didn't download any updated driver before reinstalling windows and used those i had when i first bought the system I used "update drivers" on all devices but no updates were found)

After doing all those steps, i used cleanmgr in SafeMode a last time. What i did before reinstalling XP was copying a partition on my external harddrive along with all setups of programs i use (Anti-spyware,tweaking Tools, vlc,... really everything.). So after cleanmgr and reboot, i copied a folder containing Power Defragmenter and Contig from my external drive to C: Program Files and used it to do a Defrag. Then I installed Acronis True Image, i ran the Set-up on my external but installed it on c: (i didnt copy the setup file).

I opened True Image and created a backup which i saved on my external drive. But as soon as the creation of the backup file was done, a balloon popped up saying that some data on my external drive was not saved and some folder with music data was lost. When i checked everything was still in there and nothing was gone. After reboot it couldn't detect my External Drive anymore!!!! When i look in device manager, it says "Unknown Device" And i can"t get it to work! i first thought it maybe was some error in my drivers and wanted to use a system restore point i created before trying to update them all but it says that no change will be made on drive f: (my external) because it has been removed (eventhough it isnt)

i'm sure my external drive isn't broke, neither are my usb ports...What can i do? ,


Grtzzzz

 

Welcome to majorgeeks.
Instead of looking in Device manager, look in disk management to see if it shows up there. If it does click explore to copy any data off. If you disconnected it at the wrong time, somewhen, then it can get corrupted, and can play up.
To get to disk management, in case you are not sure, -click start, right click my computer, click manage, click disk management, and a list of drives, including cd/dvd roms will be shewen.
Your external drive should be the last one shewen.

 

Hi,

The problem's solved! I used a System Restore Point, which fixed the issue. Eventhough i don't really understand how, cause i used a system restore point before, to a state when the drive was still working but that didn't help. I had one restore point i did before updateing my drivers and that one works...
Thx for the help!

Grtzzz