Mass Storage Devices Wont Install

[healeycj]

None of my plug-n-play mass storage usb device will install on vista.
However, things like Printers, usb mouses etc all install fine!

Thinks like my memory stick will start the "Found New Hardware" wizard thing and I select for it to install the driver. It then shows a pop-up in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen which says "Unidentified Device Searching allocated area" or something like that. It then tries to find it on the Windows Update server.
Both fail and then It asks me what I want to do. I select to locate driver on system and I entered "C:\windows" and checked the include subfolders box. (I Had read this will fix it)
Then another minute or so later I get another screen which says "Driver Found" but goes onto explain that it failed to install it.

As for my Ipod Video, I can't even get the computer to show the driver installation wizard or whatever. All it does is show the little "Safely remove hardware" in the tray. Even the latest version of Itunes wont register it.

This is the most annoying problem I've experienced so far with Vista, but being such a basic, simple thing that you would expect to work makes it gosh darn aggravating!

Thanks for any help!
Chris :-)

[healeycj]

Okay, here is what happened when I tried to get my usb mp3 player to install on my Vista Premium laptop:

I plugged it into a usb port.
A pop over window appeared in the bottom right of the screen which read "USB Mass Storage Device.... Installed" and "USB Mp3 device... Installed" (Or something very similar)
It then said "Unidentified Device..." and attempted to locate an installation file for it... which it failed to do.

So basically, it is installing everything but for some stupid reason it isn't assigning it a drive location (E:\ or F:\ etc) and it seems to be because of this annoying 'unidentified device'.

Can someone please tell me how to fix this problem? I've search all over for the answer!
Chris :-)

[AnnMarie]

Try assigning a drive letter manually.

To do this, rightclick on "Computer" and choose "Manage" > Disk Management.

If the USB Mp3 device is listed, rightclick on it and choose "Change Drive Letter and Paths". Click "Change" and assign a new unused drive letter.

[healeycj]

Well I tried that with my external hard drive and here is the message I got when I right-clicked and selected "Change drive letters or paths":

The operation failed to complete because the Disk Management console view is not up-to-date. Refresh the view by using the refresh task. If the problem persists, close the Disk Management console, then restart disk management or restart the computer.

ARGHHH!

So I refreshed and it didn't change anything. I also closed and reopened the manager - still nothing.

The weird thing is, it is registering the external hard-drive as a primary partition, not as an unallocated drive.

I start uni soon and If I can't get this working then I'm screwed because I have files on my usb's and hard-drives that I need to put on my computer, some which are too big even for DVD discs!

Please help!

Chris :-(

[AnnMarie]

The weird thing is, it is registering the external hard-drive as a primary partition, not as an unallocated drive.

Yes that's fine. The external drive is formatted isnt it?

I hadnt come across this issue before Chris so I ran a search. I found a few people with the same problem but the only solution I found was to reinstall Vista.

Some had tried a startup repair but didnt have any luck. See here for more help if you want to try it first.

[healeycj]

Thanks Ann.

Yes that's fine. The external drive is formatted isnt it?

By formatted do you mean it has nothing on it or what? Because I sure as heck hope it still has stuff on it! lol It is the same drive I used with my XP machine.

[AnnMarie]

I have no reason to believe that your data will not be there. Unallocated space is space on the drive that is not assigned to a partition as opposed to unused space or free space within a partition. I hope I explained that ok.