Drivers for hard disk or SSD not found  

Hi,
When a Seagate hard disk (ST3500418AS) or Plextor SSD are connected to my Win7 x64 Ultimate installation, no driver is found even via Windows Update.
The drivers should be included in Win7 hence AFAIK there are no such drivers available from the manufacturer's sites.

BTW, the drives previously worked on the machine, so it appears that something has gone awry.
Also, both drives are recognised in the BIOS.

MS Security Essentials and also Malwarebytes Anti-Malware can not find any viruses or malware.

Any suggestions?.

Run Snappy Driver Installer. It will produce logs in the "logs" folder. Let me have a look at them.

Hi, the log file is attached, along with a screen grab showing the dialog after I requested Win7 scan for hardware changes.

Code:

Windows
  Version:     Windows 7 (6.1.7601)
  PlatformId:  2
  Update:      Service Pack 1
  ServicePack: 1.0
  SuiteMask:   256
  ProductType: 1

Motherboard
  Product:     P5E WS Pro
  Model:
  Manuf:       ASUSTeK Computer INC.
  cs_Model:    P5E WS Pro
  cs_Manuf:    System manufacturer
  Chassis:     3

Battery
  AC_Status:   Online
  Flags:       128[no battery]

Monitors
  32cmx52cm (24.0in)    1.625 wide

Misc
  Type:        Desktop
  Locale:      C09
  CPU_Arch:    64-bit

Code:

DeviceInfo
  Name:         ST3500418AS ATA Device
  Status:       The device has the following problem: 28
  Manufacturer:
  HWID_reg
  Class:
  Location:
  ConfigFlags:  64
  Capabilities: 0
DriverInfo
  NoDriver
HardwareID
  IDE\DiskST3500418AS_____________________________CC46____
  IDE\ST3500418AS_____________________________CC46____
  IDE\DiskST3500418AS_____________________________
  ST3500418AS_____________________________CC46____
  GenDisk
CompatibleID
  GenDisk

Error code 28 is the most common error code when device is missing a driver. However Windows should have used the generic driver.

Code:

DeviceInfo
  Name:         PLEXTOR PX-256M5Pro ATA Device
  Status:       The device has the following problem: 1
  Manufacturer:
  HWID_reg
  Class:
  Location:
  ConfigFlags:  0
  Capabilities: 0
DriverInfo
  NoDriver
HardwareID
  IDE\DiskPLEXTOR_PX-256M5Pro_____________________1.07____
  IDE\PLEXTOR_PX-256M5Pro_____________________1.07____
  IDE\DiskPLEXTOR_PX-256M5Pro_____________________
  PLEXTOR_PX-256M5Pro_____________________1.07____
  GenDisk
CompatibleID
  GenDisk

Error code 1 means "System Failure - No Config Flags (Not Configured)"

Code:

DeviceInfo
  Name:         Disk drive
  Status:       Driver is running
  Manufacturer: (Standard disk drives)
  HWID_reg      {4d36e967-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}\0019
  Class:        Disk drives
  Location:
  ConfigFlags:  0
  Capabilities: 0
DriverInfo
  Name:     Disk drive
  Provider: Microsoft
  Date:     21/06/2006
  Version:  6.1.7600.16385
  HWID:     gendisk
  inf:      C:\Windows\inf\disk.inf,disk_install.NT
  Score:    80FF0004 0004
HardwareID
  IDE\DiskINTEL_SSDSC2CW240A3_____________________400i____
  IDE\INTEL_SSDSC2CW240A3_____________________400i____
  IDE\DiskINTEL_SSDSC2CW240A3_____________________
  INTEL_SSDSC2CW240A3_____________________400i____
  GenDisk
CompatibleID
  GenDisk

Your generic storange driver seems to be working fine so it doesn't appear that it got corrupted.

I suggest trying:
1. Removing the offending devices in Device Manager and letting Windows try to identify devices again.
2. Pick the driver manually through context menu on Device Manager.
3. Update chipset drivers. Hopefully updating device enumerators will force Windows into creating new instance entries which are configured correctly. You can use Snappy Driver Installer to see if any updated drivers are available(firstly, you need to download indexes using the "updates available" button).

Does not appear to fix it.

At My PC can't install drivers for external USB drives - TechSpot Forums it mentions a trace log located at C:\Windows\inf\setupapi.dev.log
As per the instructions, I deleted the log, then did a scan for hardware changes, and have attached the resulting log.
Does it assist you?.

Do you have only 38 inf files in C:\Windows\INF?
Do you have C:\Windows\inf\disk.inf?

In C:\Windows\INF there are 1210 .inf and .PNF files, along with various directories.

C:\Windows\inf\disk.inf was found and is attached (with .txt extension).

The logs indicated that it scanned only 38 files and didn't find any matching HardwareID even though C:\Windows\inf\disk.inf does have "gendisk". I'm not sure why it would fail it like that.

Did you try picking the driver manually? If you did, describe which steps you took and how it went.
Did you try updating chipset drivers?

The drives are listed in Device Manager under 'Other Devices'.
Their 'properties/device status' are:

"The drivers for this device are not installed. (Code 28)
There is no driver selected for the device information set or element.

To find a driver for this device, click Update Driver."

To manually update, I have clicked on 'update driver', selected the path to c:\windows\inf, then clicked Next, however it merely informs "Windows could not find driver software for your device".

I also ran a download from the Intel site that supposedly updated the Intel chipset drivers. It did not help.

See How to Repair Corrupt USB Mass Storage or CD/DVD Drivers - TechSpot Forums

Use the same approach outlined in the post to check on (and refresh the files with the most recent version in the Windows the driverstore)

C:\Windows\inf\disk.inf
C:\Windows\inf\disk.pnf
C:\Windows\system32\drivers\disk.sys