Harddisk appears as local disk

Your turn for point B I'm going away for a while.

stoleaway: Thanks for updating your specs.

how 'bout the questions I asked here

Since the external drive drags your system down - disconnect it until instructed to connect it. You want to make sure your base system is functioning well first. Anything that you added, like BD-rom, should be disconnected. This will isolate device issues.


What AV do you have on your system? Have you scanned your machine? What resulted?

Eset has a good online scanner that might catch more. Also do you have Malwarebytes? Run MWbytes too.

What happened a few days ago when the ext drive started acting oddly? Were you downloading large files? backing up your system?.... every little bit of information helps. That includes letting folks on this side know what you have and have not done yet. Hence, my asking again about the bd-rom....

Thanks,

Bill
.

Ok John,

I'll have to wait to see more from stoleaway. I jumped in on this one, we can both offer suggestions as long as we are moving in the same direction. Your focus was good, I thought I needed more / different information if I was going to be of any help. F5ing added something I tend to forget - update the specs.

Working together is always best. So I'll check back, but I might need some help - depending on what I'm able to figure out. jumanji might be a good resource if we can't provide a good solution.

See you in a bit then, mate.

ICit2lol said:

Your turn for point B I'm going away for a while.

Ok Bill one last suggestion re scan - SuperAntuSpyware I find this one quick and efficient

SUPERAntiSpyware | Remove Malware | Remove Spyware - AntiMalware, AntiSpyware, AntiAdware!

Ok John, I'll tuck that away in "Another tool to investigate and try" - I don't anything about it, so you'll have to guide stoleaway.

stoleaway: Found a few easy things to try. I don't want to overload you, so take it slow.
If you were able to get inot Disk Management, try changing the drive letter. I recommend remove drive letter, and assign a new one - as opposed to change drive letter'

Is the model of your ext drive Seagate Expansion Hard Drive site
STBV1000100 1TB USB 3.0
or
STAY1000102 1TB USB 3.0
or something different - those were my best guesses from info posted

Don't worry about trying to do everything at one time. better to do one thing and post the results, then the next thing. I'll catch up - someone else might pop in with another suggestion, read what folks are posting and provide feedback.

With your system denegrated by the ext drive, it might take you so time to provide feedback. Try this - it might be a quick fix, but other things should be checked.

Eject / Safely remove the ext drive and unplug the USB cable. Restart your computer.
Make sure your ext drive's power supply is securely attached to the ext drive (larger drives usually have higher power requirements and come with their own power supply)
Make sure that the ext drive end of the USB cable is securely attached.
Reconnect the ext drive to a different USB port
--> this should cause Windows to load the drivers for the device again.

What's the status? I don't expect this to make much difference since you already said the drive does NOT work on your laptop, but......

Can you get into Device Manager? Are there any warning or error indicators for any devices? (DevMgr will usually help you find them - the group containing a problem device will be expanded)

There was a post on another thread that asked the OP if they had reinstalled Windows with the ext drive attached. so I'll ask the same question here. did you install windows while the ext drive was attached?

Ok, that's plenty of stuff for you to do.

Thanks,

Bill
.

stoleaway: Ok - thought the system might too fubar with the drive attached.

In the DevMgmnt disk mgmnt shot - what is drive 1? currently assigned H: - is that the bd-rom psuedo drive? Please eject / dismount that if it is. Please stop any software that's running to mount ISO psuedo drives (DAEMON tools?).

And just to be absolutely clean - take out the audio CD.

Thanks,

Bill
.

I'll have to look at this a bit. Your shot of Computer shows
Q: MS Office click to run
F: Local disk
D: HP Recovery
C: OS

I: bd-rom
E: audio CD


your DskMgmnt shows
Disk 0
-- System
-- C: OS
-- D: HP Recovery

Disk 1
--H:

CD-rom 0
-- E: audio cd

CD-rom 1
-- I:

I think Disk 1 is the root of your problem, it's identified as removable - but let me think on it.
Are any other drives attached or might this be a phantom. I'm going to take a break and get some slepp. I'll check back in a few hours.

You might want to follow jumanji's advice in this post.

Thanks,
Bill
.