Yet another Western Digital My Passport driver problem

First off, let me just admit that this problem is wholly of my own making. It's my fault for futzing with a perfectly good working situation and screwing it up by messing with drivers. Yes, a cardinal sin in Windows world, I know. But just in case someone out there is an expert willing to help, I'd appreciate it very much.

I have a Western Digital 1 TB My Passport USB 3.0 drive, model number wdbbep0010bbk-03. The drive was working just fine on my self-built PC, running Windows 7 Professional x64. I perceived some slowness in the USB 3.0 transfer rate and decided that I needed to install the SES driver from Western Digital, which led me to uninstall the drivers for the device, restart the computer, plug the drive back in and let Windows find the drivers. Alas, this did not happen. Windows just said that it didn't find any drivers for My Passport 07A8. There was no mention of SES drivers. When I forced the SES drivers on the hard drive (downloaded from Western Digital), they installed but in Device Manager, Western Digital Drive Management had a yellow exclamation mark and nothing worked. During all this, the drive does not show up in Windows Explorer or in Disk Management.

I plugged the hard drive into a W7Pro x64 machine at work today to see what happens there, and Windows Update automatically installs the hard drive in two places in the Device Manager, one under Disk Drives listed as My Passport 07A8 and then under Western Digital Drive Management as SES Device. The drivers listed for the first instance are the typical drivers for any external USB hard drive connected to a PC: disk.sys and partmgr.sys (and maybe iaStor.sys?). Basically, what I think I've done is I uninstalled those drivers that are simply part of Windows, although other USB disk drives that apparently use those drivers work just fine on my home PC. Maybe I uninstalled the drivers' association with this particular hard drive?

Any cursory examination of this board or the forums over at Western Digital and other places online shows that I am not the only one with this issue. I have tried all sorts of things, and have restarted my computer an umpteen number of times and each time I plug the hard drive in the same result happens. When I tried to point the hard drive towards the drivers, whether they are Windows drivers or the SES drivers supplied by WD, they still would not install. I tried removing all instances I could find of the hard drive anywhere. I tried this registry thing I saw online, talking about UpperFilters and LowerFilters. Deleting those registry keys just meant my computer wouldn't start, so I had to go back to last known good configuration, so that didn't work either. Anyway, I guess I'm here to see there is something completely obvious I'm missing somehow. I consider myself a fairly experienced computer user and I think I've systematically tried to go about this, though some of my irritation at myself for creating this problem where there was no problem meant that I maybe went about things too fast sometimes and might have missed something.

The drive by the way works just find on my Mac laptop and on my Ubuntu server (showing the two partitions, one exFAT and one NTFS, without any problem). I updated the firmware on the drive just in case, no change. I've tried all the USB sorts, in front and back, 2.0 and 3.0, with no luck. The drive doesn't need extra power as it runs off my old Macbook just fine and of course was working fine before I screwed up the drivers. I'm wary of using any of those driver cleaner utilities that hang about dubious looking websites online, but maybe someone can recommend a trusted tool? Maybe Ccleaner will/can do the job? Do I need to delete partmgr or disk.sys from my system32 folder? Is there an .inf file I need to point the drive to somewhere? Can I take the partmgr.sys and disk.sys from the Windows 7 computer at work and replace my own files with those and see if that works?

Thank you in advance to anyone willing to help, cheers.

Thanks for the reply. So the drivers used by the hard drive are the Windows .sys drivers. Are you saying that I should replace the ones on my computer with the ones from my work computer? They are the same name and same version number. I could be wrong but in my experience most PNP hard drives just work with the default Windows drivers for access to the contents while scanners typically need a driver from the manufacturer to get to full functionality. But I'll give it a shot, thanks again.

Hi janitoronmars,

So you're saying that you've made the steps mentioned here:WD SES driver download and instructions for recovering the WD SmartWare installer and it didn't work? You could move the WD SES folder to the Windows\system32\drivers to see if that will work.
You could do like Imrankhan suggested - to copy and imported files to Windows system folder.
Have you tried to look in BIOS if it's been recognized? Also, have you checked the USB controller, I mean have you plugged another USB device to any of the USB ports? I've seen such issue months ago.
Another thing that comes up in my mind is to ask you whether there's any error code showing up when you plug the WD My passport?

Please, keep us posted. Thanks.

KY_WD

KYWD, thanks for the response. Yes, unfortunately, I have tried the WD driver. When I installed the hard drive on my work computer (also Windows 7 64 bit), I saw that the My Passport is a USB Composite Device. It first installs as a regular disk drive with default Windows drivers (disk.sys and partmgr.sys, plus iaStor if you have Intel's Rapid Storage drivers installed) and shows up in Device Manager under Disk Drives. Then it installs the WD SES driver as well (although the SES driver failed to install on a Windows 7 32 bit machine even though I could access the drive just fine in Windows Explorer).

Yesterday I tried a multitude of things again, including what you and Imrankhan suggested regarding copying the driver files from a working computer. I also followed suggestions here to remove old devices and USB drivers and here to replace usbstor.inf files with fresh copies but still nothing changed. Other external hard drives plugged into the same front computer ports work just fine, including a brand new USB 3.0 enclosure that I just got yesterday and my old USB 2.0 WD external drive. I feel like at a basic level, the hard drive is just that and the Windows drivers are all it should need. The SES drivers aren't required to at least be able to read the contents or for the drive to show up in disk management, which it doesn't. I'll check the BIOS again when I get home, see if it is in there but last time I did it wasn't.

The error code in Device Manager is 28, drivers are not installed. When I force the SES drivers on the drive, Windows tells me to not do that because it can't verify that the drivers are for the device. When I go ahead anyway, it installs the drivers but this time with error code 31. I can upload some screenshots later on when I get home. At this point, I think only a Windows 7 reinstall will do the trick I feel and I can't say I'm prepared to go through that for one hard drive when I do have others available. So I guess this hard drive will be mostly for use with my work machines and Macs and Linux machines. Not the end of the world, just irritating.

Thanks for all the help, please let me know if you have any other suggestions!

Hi again,

Let's think of anything else and leave Windows reinstall as a final solution. :)
I did some search in Microsoft's KB and here's what I've found:
"The drivers for this device are not installed (Code 28). This code means the device was not installed completely.
To reinstall the drivers for this device, click Reinstall Driver
If that does not work, try removing the device from Device Manager and using the Add New Hardware wizard to redetect it. You may need to obtain updated drivers if the error still occurs."

Regarding next code:

"This device is not working properly because <device> is not working properly. (Code 31) More than likely, This code appears when a device is dependent on another device to be functioning correctly. This does not include devices that are enumerated by the parent device. The other device will also have one of these Device Manager error codes. If the devices still do not work, remove them from Device Manager and use the Add New Hardware wizard to redetect them."

I've seen people extracting their data through Linux Live CD. I think you could use the WRITE ZEROS option, once you did the backup of all your data. After that install WD SmartWare software and use your device as if it's new.

Good luck.

KY_WD

Forget the SES driver. It has nothing to do with your problem. (it provides added WD functions). It's not needed for the drive to be recognized and work as a disk.

First question is: is this problem ONLY with your WD drive? Try a simple flash drive. Watch Device Manager (under USB category) as you connect/disconnect the device when
> You insert a simple flash. You should see a USB Mass Storage devoce appear/disappear
> When you insert the WD, it appears as a USB Composite device when plugged in (disappear when it's not). If USB Composite doesn't show up, could be the USB Composite driver that's corrupt

Check it out and let me know what you see

I have a 750GB My Passport for portability and store files such as installable diagnostics and backups of data from computers I work on. I install nothing onto the computers for it, just plug in and use like I do with floppy disks, Zip disks, USB Thumb/Flash drives, etc.

Sorry for the late response, guys, and thank you for all the responses! Okay, in order:

KYWD said:

Hi again,

Let's think of anything else and leave Windows reinstall as a final solution. :)
I did some search in Microsoft's KB and here's what I've found:
"The drivers for this device are not installed (Code 28). This code means the device was not installed completely.
To reinstall the drivers for this device, click Reinstall Driver
If that does not work, try removing the device from Device Manager and using the Add New Hardware wizard to redetect it. You may need to obtain updated drivers if the error still occurs."

Regarding next code:

"This device is not working properly because <device> is not working properly. (Code 31) More than likely, This code appears when a device is dependent on another device to be functioning correctly. This does not include devices that are enumerated by the parent device. The other device will also have one of these Device Manager error codes. If the devices still do not work, remove them from Device Manager and use the Add New Hardware wizard to redetect them."

I've seen people extracting their data through Linux Live CD. I think you could use the WRITE ZEROS option, once you did the backup of all your data. After that install WD SmartWare software and use your device as if it's new.

Good luck.

KY_WD

Unfortunately, I have tried this solution multiple times, trying to install drivers manually and it sadly did not work. As for the data on the drive itself, it's perfectly fine and can be read by my Ubuntu machine, my Macbook and my work Windows 7 computer no problem. And the data is all backups so if I lose it, it isn't terribly crucial.

ComputerGeek said:

Forget the SES driver. It has nothing to do with your problem. (it provides added WD functions). It's not needed for the drive to be recognized and work as a disk.

First question is: is this problem ONLY with your WD drive? Try a simple flash drive. Watch Device Manager (under USB category) as you connect/disconnect the device when
> You insert a simple flash. You should see a USB Mass Storage devoce appear/disappear
> When you insert the WD, it appears as a USB Composite device when plugged in (disappear when it's not). If USB Composite doesn't show up, could be the USB Composite driver that's corrupt

Check it out and let me know what you see

I agree, the SES driver is only for certain features of the drive (features I probably will never use). I was just having slowness issues which is why I thought reinstalling all the drivers (regular Windows and the WD SES) would maybe make a difference. The drive was copying data at the same speed as USB 2.0, even after I made sure I had the right USB 3.0 TurboBoost etc drivers installed and active. Anyway, all other USB devices, external hard drives at USB 2.0, USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 flash drives all work. So if is the USB composite driver that is corrupt, that is usbstor.sys right? I believe above I cleared that and cleared its associated usbstor.inf file, still with no change.

Berton said:

I have a 750GB My Passport for portability and store files such as installable diagnostics and backups of data from computers I work on. I install nothing onto the computers for it, just plug in and use like I do with floppy disks, Zip disks, USB Thumb/Flash drives, etc.

Agreed, yeah, that's how it should just work without the extra drivers. But it doesn't show up in Windows Explorer or Disk Management.

Appreciate all the help, guys. I'm not looking to do a Windows 7 reinstall anytime soon but I think that's what I'll have to wait for. If you guys have any further ideas, much appreciated, and cheers!