USB2.0 External HD after SP2

[splendid]

The USB2.0 External HD was working fine until SP2 was installed.

In device manager, there was a yellow question mark on USB device. I let Windows update the driver and the yellow mark disappeared.

Now the drive letter is gone. I deleted the partition. I could partition it only after I rebooted. And still no drive letter. I could not format (NTFS) the HD.

I tried the device on another computer with SP2 with the same problem.

I tried it on a computer with SP1 and it worked fine.

I did BIOS flash. It got Via chipset 4-in-1 V5.1 installed. Windows update was performed. Tried USB2.0 driver from Constar.

Any idea or recommendation?

USB Enclosure: Constar ST-2322B2

HD: Maxtor 120GB

CPU: AMD64 3000+

RAM: PC3200 512MB

MB: MSI K8T Neo-Fis2r

Video: EVGA GF-FX5500 256MB

Windows: XP Home OEM

[splendid]

Sorry about a typo.

USB Enclosure shoud be ST-2312B2.

[BeenThereB4]

Go to "Administrative Tools" - "Disk Management" and assign a drive letter to the partition.

[XtremeMaC]

in short

go to run

type diskmgmt.msc

[splendid]

I can add a driver letter but i cannot format. When I reboot, the driver letter disappears.

[splendid]

The Maxtor HD is fine. When I connect it directly, I can partition and format it.

[XtremeMaC]

hmm okay 2 things u can do

1st uninstall the drive. (go to hardware properties and find the hdd and right click uninstall) then go to view and "show hidden deviced" see if u have any other entries of your hdd if found delete,

restart..

2nd go to regedit then go to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Enum\IDE

find your hdd and remove the registry entry of it

after a restart it should find your hdd and everything should be fine

but b4 doing this search in kb articles of microsoft. they've something for it I know...

[IcemanND]

is the drive coming up as dynamic or basic? As I recall you could for it to make an external device dynamic in sp1 but it wasn't supposed to and they fixed/broke that in sp2. change it to basic and try again.

[splendid]

XtremeMaC, I will try your suggestion.

IcemanND, it is basic not dynamic.

[splendid]

Thanks to XtremeMaC, I finally resolved the problem.

When I connected the USB 2.0 External HD, Device Manager listed it as USB Storage Device with a yellow question mark. I let Windows find the driver. I then clicked on View Hidden Devices and saw a yellow question mark on Unknown Device. I let Windows find the driver and it did. Now I can delete, create a partition and format the HD without any problem.

Thanks guys.