BleepingComputer.com: PC Not recognizing External Hard Drive

My friend has a Dell Inspiron 531s with Windows Vista. She has a 500 GB Maxtor Personal storage 3200 external hard drive. The computer is now not recognizing this external hard drive. The device manager shows a yellow explanation point next to the USB driver. She called dell and they told her the driver to install, which she did. Unfortunately this did not work and now she seems to have two drivers connected to this usb port if that is possible. I have her checking if this external works in another computer. Any ideas on the possible problems. Could the external be broken in some way or could it be the driver is the issue. Appreciate the help.

Hi,

Uninstall all drivers that are related to the harddrive. If you have two drivers then these are more than likely conflicting.

Once uninstalled, try reinstalling the drivers that dell advised you to.

If it works in a different PC, i assume it is connecting via USB Cable, try a different USB Device in the USB slot to make sure it is working. Try different ports aswell.

The maxtor external hard drive does not work in any of the USB ports. A usb flash drive does work in every USB outlet on her computer. I will have her check the external hard drive out on another computer. Is it possible that the maxtor External has just stopped working completely. Could you reformat it and start again. Her computer is having some freezing going on occasionally and general slowness. Unsure if this is caused by the external hard drive, driver incompatible issues or some minor malware/spyware n the system. Appreciate any suggestions.

I tend to look at driver issues first of all but it could be a number of things.

Can you hear the drive spinning? Are the lights etc coming on?

The light is coming on and it is definitely spinning. You can hear it working, light is solid. You can't see the external hard drive under My Computer or disk management. It is showing up in Device manager as USB mass storage device. It is has a yellow question mark next it. Tried updating the driver, but that didn't find driver for it. Would reformatting the External via HP Disk format utility help. Any Ideas?

Th question mark in Device Manager usually means the drivers are corrupted or missing. If you double click on the item and then the Driver tab you can uninstall the driver, when you reboot the installation wizard will look for the appropriate driver.

If where unable to locate the external drive on the computer than we would be unable to format it.

Have you had chance to try it in another PC yet?