RE: External Hard Drive (USB MassStorage Device missing?)

I am having the same problem, It worked fine on XP, and even on Vista using
my laptop, but it cannot find any drivers (it shouldn't need any anyway) on
Vista Ultimate on my desktop. This is a serious issue, and either Microsoft
or Western Digital needs to fix it soon, because this is frankly absurd, and
I'm frustrated.

I've tried contacting Western Digital, and they have not responded.

"Lincoln 6 Echo" wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I am trying to connect my Western Digital external hard drive over USB port
> and it seems vista cannot find the Usb MassStorage Device Driver
>
> Any thoughts? Even scanning my other partition with XP is not of use (it
> says file not found).
>
> I thought MS would include at least these trivial drivers???
>
> Petar
>

I am having the same trouble with my WD external hard drive. It works great
on my XP desktop. I recently bought a new laptop with Vista. I had to install
drivers and updates several times for it to finally see my 1GB thumb drive.
Then after all I had to manually direct the computer to the driver for the
thumb drive. Every once in awhile it will see my external hard drive but more
times than not it won't. Who knows if my Vista machine will see either my
thumb drive or my WD drive next time I start it up.
If anyone has any ideas on how to deal with this issue please let me know.

"Kev50027" wrote:

> I am having the same problem, It worked fine on XP, and even on Vista using
> my laptop, but it cannot find any drivers (it shouldn't need any anyway) on
> Vista Ultimate on my desktop. This is a serious issue, and either Microsoft
> or Western Digital needs to fix it soon, because this is frankly absurd, and
> I'm frustrated.
>
> I've tried contacting Western Digital, and they have not responded.
>
> "Lincoln 6 Echo" wrote:
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > I am trying to connect my Western Digital external hard drive over USB port
> > and it seems vista cannot find the Usb MassStorage Device Driver
> >
> > Any thoughts? Even scanning my other partition with XP is not of use (it
> > says file not found).
> >
> > I thought MS would include at least these trivial drivers???
> >
> > Petar
> >

jw93 wrote:
> I am having the same trouble with my WD external hard drive. It works great
> on my XP desktop. I recently bought a new laptop with Vista. I had to install
> drivers and updates several times for it to finally see my 1GB thumb drive.
> Then after all I had to manually direct the computer to the driver for the
> thumb drive...

Well, you may have more than one problem. The problem of not finding
USB drivers sounds like your C:\windows\inf\INFCACHE.1 is corrupted and
needs to be deleted. (You will need to edit its file permissions to
give Full Control to the Users group before you can delete it.)

If you are also seeing "...One of the devices attached to this computer
has malfunctioned and Windows does not recognize it..." then the fix
I gave you above may not work, but I'd like to know.

I deleted the INFCACHE.1 file and that didn't help. I don't want to do any
drastic measures because it is reading my thumb drive and my printer,
keyboard and mouse just fine. With my WD external hard drive I am still
getting the window that says "...One of the devices attached to this computer
has malfunctioned and Windows does not recognize it..." I am beyond knowing
what to do. I tried going to the store where I bought the ext. hard drive and
they don't know anything about the troubles Vista is having with reading USB
devices. Thanks for you response and I really hope someone comes up with
something soon.

"Don" wrote:

> jw93 wrote:
> > I am having the same trouble with my WD external hard drive. It works great
> > on my XP desktop. I recently bought a new laptop with Vista. I had to install
> > drivers and updates several times for it to finally see my 1GB thumb drive.
> > Then after all I had to manually direct the computer to the driver for the
> > thumb drive...
>
> Well, you may have more than one problem. The problem of not finding
> USB drivers sounds like your C:\windows\inf\INFCACHE.1 is corrupted and
> needs to be deleted. (You will need to edit its file permissions to
> give Full Control to the Users group before you can delete it.)
>
> If you are also seeing "...One of the devices attached to this computer
> has malfunctioned and Windows does not recognize it..." then the fix
> I gave you above may not work, but I'd like to know.
>
>