External HD samsung SP0822n not showing as unit

XP disc is there on device manager but doesn't show icon

[silverbytes]

Buyed an external hd, it was suppoused to plug and play without formatting on xp. The disc is on device manager properly recongized and also shows in tray an icon to quit hardware safely. But in Mypc there is no icon at all. I guess it should appear as Unit G: but that doesn't happen...

Led is properly on so I don't know what to do. Drivers are not needed and seems to be ok...

Any help?

[kaled]

The drive might be there. Try pressing F5 in Explorer. Sometimes drive changes are not notified correctly.

Kaled.

[ronburk]

Hmmmm, kinda sounds like an XP "feature" I vaguely remember biting me in the butt in the past. Do you perchance have some mapped network drives? If so, make sure you have not mapped any to the "next" drive letter that comes after your local drives.

Example: You have local drives A:, C:, and D: (a floppy, a hard disk, and a DVD). You then map a network drive to E:. If you next plug in a USB drive, a bug in Windows will cause it to decide that E: is what it should map the USB drive to, causing a collision. All kinds of weird results can happen, but one of them is that you can't "see" the contents of the drive. The fix is to make sure you map your network drives higher up (I start with Z: and work down from there for mapped network drives).

Google "Q297694" for the MS support article if this sounds like it might be your problem.

[silverbytes]

Right-click My Computer, and then click Manage.
Under Computer Management (Local), click Disk Management

It figures with a red and white icon Not initialized but when trying to initialize fails...
non specified Error (80004005)
Origin LDM

[silverbytes]

Went to disc properties and my primary hd is there and also the new external but

my primary says Location 0 (0)
the new esternal Location 0

both appears like functioning correctly there...

[kaled]

Assuming this is a USB drive (not Firewire)...

Plug in a flash drive. If that is recognised correctly, you can be 95% sure the operating system is ok and the drive is knackered. To test this theory further, try plugging the drive into another PC.

Kaled.

[silverbytes]

It worked pluggin it on another pc but of course not plug and play that easy. I had to initialize and partition the disk first, and assign a drive letter.
I'll try it on the original pc now and expect it works!

[silverbytes]

It doesn't work on my pc... :(
It works on another but plugged in on my pc still appears as not initialized and process fails so can't see it.

[kaled]

Try these...

1) Unplug the drive. Go into the device manager and uninstall the driver (it'll be hidden so you'll have to show it). Restart Windows and try again.

2) Temporarily uninstall antivirus and firewall software (and disconnect from the internet). Restart Windows and try again. It would probably be advisable to uninstall the driver too.

Kaled.