WinXP not showing USB Storage devices in Explorer?

[ponder]

Got a mates laptop here I have to resize some partitions on but first I wanna backup his data and image the entire disk for safety sake. Problem is when I plug a external USB HD or flashdisk in it is not displayed in Explorer and I don't get the usual popup window either. I do get the 'dong' sound when the device is connected and the system knows about it as it appears in the Safely Remove Hardware section where I can stop it.

Why can I not browse the device? Any settings in XP I should look out for?

 

[Rouxenator]

What devices shows up in Device Manager when you plug it in ?
And in the Disk Management Console is their any drives that do not have letters assigned to them ?

 

[rebel998]

Have you tried scanning for hardware changes in control panel?

 

[LFX]

on the rare occasion the cause for that could be that the usb port is not getting enough power to initialize the device...

other than that, perhaps corrupted drivers . . . really not sure

 

[ponder]

What devices shows up in Device Manager when you plug it in ?
And in the Disk Management Console is their any drives that do not have letters assigned to them ?

It's sees it as the correct device, "WD 1600JD External USB Device"

Under Disk Management it is seen as "Disk 1, Basic, 149.5GB, Online" "WD160GB (F) 149.05 GB NTFS Healthy"

The above seems all good and normal.

Ok, just noticed the assigned drive letter clashes with an assigned network drive mapping. I reassigned the drive to Z: and all is fine now.

Thanks for opening my eyes, I feel like a stupid twat now for missing something so obvious Maybe it's just to early in the morning for me

Any idea why it does not automatically use a non-assigned drive letter by default?

 

[ponder]

Guys, thank you all for your assistance, much appreciated

 

[Rouxenator]

No problem I still get caught out by that one sometimes - that's why I asked those questions, glad you could figure out a fix from it