External USB WD Passport Essential will not start

[twatripp]

When plugged in in makes the "USB sound" It shows on device manager as a "Disk Drive" with exclamation point. Under properties it says "Device cannot start code 10). It gives driver verstion 6.1.7600.16385,. It will not format. I shows no other information.

This drive works perfectly on my XP machine. I have tried different cables, different USB ports, restarts, etc., but get nothing out of it on the Windows 7 machine. I did reformat it on the XP machine and still nothing on the Windows 7 machine.

I flashed the BIOS. The USB ports work well with a thumb drive and other periferals, but nothing with this WD Passport. According WD site, this drive is supposed to work with standard drivers. Could the driver be corrupt? How can one replace a standard Windows 7 driver.

Any help will be appreciated. Thanks.

 

[G4b1t]

I had the same problem with an WD Passport. i contact their service and told me to test it on another machine. guess what. i tested it in XP and it worked. Since i had it in my bag i thought maybe the cable on the hd side was covered in dust or something. i cleaned it with air throughly both the cable and the hd and it suddenly worked. now every time windows don't recognize my Passport i just clean the socket with air and voila. success.

Ps. i searched for drivers too, didn't find anything besides for win2k if i recall correctly. i used default drivers.

 

[twatripp]

After all this effort, I have solved the problem. On my motherboard, there are two options for powering the USB -- VCC and 5VSB. My jumpers were set to the 5VSB mode meaning the USB ports should always be powered, even in standby. I switched the jumper for the front USB ports to the VCC mode and the hard drive is now recognized and the driver started. I have been able to copy files to it and to make a full backup copy of my system. I can only assume that there must be a problem with the 5VSB bus on the motherboard. (By the way, it's not the PS as I had already swapped one of those) I think the motherboard itself must regulate the 5VSB. Thanks for your thoughts.

 

[WindowsStar]

I have seen this before and made many calls to WD about this. They did not mention the USB power issue but did state there was an incompatibility issue with some WD HDs and some computers as well as Windows 7, Windows Server 2008, and Windows Server 2008R2. They may know about the USB power issue but since some motherboards will not let you make this change or cannot be changed WD just defaults to incompatible with some systems and OS.

On a side note: I did have an issue with a WD HD that did not work on Windows Server 2008. I tried everything and it refused to work. It was late and I went to bed figuring I would try again in the morning. In the morning I was going to try again, but the drive was working. It took a lot of testing to figure it out, but what it came down to was leaving the WD HD plugged in to the machine for more than 2 hours, then automatically the drivers would load and the drive would work. It has worked on that machine ever since (1.5 years now) I can take it off the machine and put it back and it works every time. Very very strange.