Hello,
I'm having trouble with my external harddrive.
Just recently, I did a major clean up of my desktop computer, removing a lot of unnecessary programs and other junk software. I think I might have removed too much because now my external harddrive won't respond properly. When I turn it on, it either freezes the computer or fails to respond at all. I must have accidentally removed a driver or something important for interfacing with the drive properly.
Can anyone think of a program that would show up in "Add/Remove Programs" whose removal would affect communnication with external harddrives (Windows XP Pro)?
Other USB devices seem to work fine: our digital camera, my flash drive, iPod and other music devices, etc. - so I don't think it has anything to do with the USB drivers (they don't appear to be malfunctioning when I bring up the Device Manager list - but who knows - certainly not me
).
Another strange thing is that the external harddrive seemed to work fine for a short while after doing my major cleanup. I'm pretty sure I rebooted at least once since the cleanup and still found it to work fine (but my memory is not clear). Also, although now the symptoms of the problem are that either the computer freezes or it simply doesn't recognize that the harddrive is connected and turned on, it used to be that I could browse the contents of the harddrive up to a certain level in the folder hierarchy (that is, I could go as far as f:/music/MyMixes) but then certain folders beyond that level would cause the computer to freeze when I tried to open them. This would happen throughout a couple of reboots, and then just turning the harddrive on would cause problems, and that's where I am now.
Thanks for any help.
I'm having trouble with my external harddrive.
Just recently, I did a major clean up of my desktop computer, removing a lot of unnecessary programs and other junk software. I think I might have removed too much because now my external harddrive won't respond properly. When I turn it on, it either freezes the computer or fails to respond at all. I must have accidentally removed a driver or something important for interfacing with the drive properly.
Can anyone think of a program that would show up in "Add/Remove Programs" whose removal would affect communnication with external harddrives (Windows XP Pro)?
Other USB devices seem to work fine: our digital camera, my flash drive, iPod and other music devices, etc. - so I don't think it has anything to do with the USB drivers (they don't appear to be malfunctioning when I bring up the Device Manager list - but who knows - certainly not me
).Another strange thing is that the external harddrive seemed to work fine for a short while after doing my major cleanup. I'm pretty sure I rebooted at least once since the cleanup and still found it to work fine (but my memory is not clear). Also, although now the symptoms of the problem are that either the computer freezes or it simply doesn't recognize that the harddrive is connected and turned on, it used to be that I could browse the contents of the harddrive up to a certain level in the folder hierarchy (that is, I could go as far as f:/music/MyMixes) but then certain folders beyond that level would cause the computer to freeze when I tried to open them. This would happen throughout a couple of reboots, and then just turning the harddrive on would cause problems, and that's where I am now.
Thanks for any help.
