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#1
USB Mass storage devices not working - including card readers
Some while back I installed Acronis True Image Home 2012 on my Win7 64 bit PC. It is a backup solution that would have satisfied my backup requirements at the time. I immediately found a problem with the fact that it failed to recognise my network drive as a backup location. After days of communications with their support dept. and a couple of sessions of remote support they realised that the software was not happy about "empty" disk drives. I have a built in multi-port card reader and also have card readers built into the monitor. They show as disk drives in "My Computer" even when there are no cards in the slots. The option in Windows to "hide empty drives" didn't cure the problem.
They eventually sent me a patch that cured the network drive recognition problem but left me with the problem that my PC no longer recognises any USB mass storage device or any memory card plugged into either of the card readers. I didn't realise I had this new problem for some time as I don't use USB disk drives. It's not just USB attached devices that are not recognised, it also won't recognise firewire disks either. I have tried un-installing the Acronis software but it doesn't remove the errant driver(s).
I've tried removing the devices and rebooting to force an update and I've tried scanning for new drivers without success. The PC tells me I have the latest drivers installed.
I have now found the 2 errant drivers and removed them but still these devices show a problem.
It's not only cards plugged into the card reader slots that fail to be recognised as disks. If I use a USB card reader I still have the problem. Any other type of USB device works fine, just anything that shows in my computer as a disk drive becomes a problem.
Anyone seen or heard of such a problem? It seems Acronis can't help once you've un-installed their software. They have a patch to cure the problem if you have their software installed but can't correct the problem of their faulty un-installer to bring your PC back to it's prior state.
One final question. If I run the Win7 setup again to re-install Win7 will I retain all my application registry settings etc. I am prepared to do that and download all the required patches etc. but really don't want to start from scratch again.
Sorry for the long post.