Vista SP1 Breaks Up with External Hard Drives
iJohn | March 29, 2008 6:25 pm
After being all excited about installing Service Pack 1, Vista SP1 has completely failed me! I installed it on both my desktop computer and my laptop. Everything was running great until I wanted to backup my files to my Western Digital MyBook Home Edition. That is when the troubles started!
Now, Vista keeps telling me “unknown hardware” after I plug the USB cable into the computer. I know these external hard drives are plug and play. It should be very simple to use. Just plug in the USB and start transferring files over! Unfortunately it wasn’t!
After troubleshooting this “unknown hardware” and looking for new drivers for it, I was just about to give up. I then decided to uninstall Vista SP1 on my laptop while I am waiting to talk to Microsoft Support through their online chat. After SP1 gets done uninstalling, I plugged in my external hard drive to the laptop, and it works like magic and like it did before!
Microsoft Support in India decides to call me today to see if I am still having issues with my DVD Player?! (I had to correct him twice and explain it was an external hard drive). His fix was wait a couple days, and maybe there will be an update released to fix this issue since they are waiting on the manufacture drivers. Altho last time I checked, it was just standard Microsoft Plug and Play drivers for external hard drives. The support guy in India didn’t think so! I asked him “Do I need to uninstall SP1 if it will be a couple months for an update for this issue or will be a couple days?” His response then back to me was it may be a few months. So nothing really got accomplished with Microsoft Support except that Vista SP1 really screwed up external hard drive drivers!
Now, I am going to uninstall SP1 on my desktop and wait a couple years for the Service Pack for the Service Pack 1.
Anyone else having issues with this? and maybe find a fix?
4 Responses to “Vista SP1 Breaks Up with External Hard Drives”
I had what sounds like the same problem but it was way before SP1 and it happened at complete random. I had to tell it that i want to install the drivers manually, and point it to the system32 folder, and it would install. Tedious? Yes. Did it get the job done? Yes. As far as I know, they never released a fix. This was with Vista Ultimate 64-bit, and I’ve since gone to 32bit and didnt have the problem anymore.
I had what sounds like the same problem but it was way before SP1 and it happened at complete random. I had to tell it that i want to install the drivers manually, and point it to the system32 folder, and it would install. Tedious? Yes. Did it get the job done? Yes. As far as I know, they never released a fix. This was with Vista Ultimate 64-bit, and I’ve since gone to 32bit and didnt have the problem anymore.
Nice write up and blog , Thanks for sharing all those good info
best regards
John
http://xtupload.com
I have the same issue with my external drive. After installing sp1 for vista home premium I turned on my external drive now I get a memory dump error, and the computer reboots over and over until I shut off the drive. Prior to the sp1 install it always worked great. Also I have tried my external drive on other computers running with sp1 and guess what the same problem on them also. Could not find any drivers to support this drive because it is windows ready device. Hmm Microsoft we need some support here.
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