Solved Invisible External HD and JMicron controller

[Schubert]

I'm having problems with Windows 7 not seeing an external hard drive plugged into an eSata port (on an Asus P5K-E motherboard). The eSata ports are controlled by a JMicron JMB363 controller on the motherboard.

My computer is dual boot, XP and Windows 7. When running XP, all is well. The operating system sees the external hard drive. But when running Windows 7, the drive is not seen. It doesn't show up in Device Manager. Nor does the JMicron controller show up in Device Manager (it shows up in Device Manager when I'm running XP).

If it's a driver issue, I have no idea how to install/update the driver in Windows 7 since the controller is invisible in Device Manager. I have access to JMicron's drivers on their ftp site. Any help on how to remedy this problem would be much appreciated.

 

[Faladu]

You need to run the J Micron for your motherboard/PC 7 driver's .exe installer and then reboot and should be seen in 7, it's a specific OS driver so the XP one probably doesn't include one for 7.

Nothing in Device Manager = no driver installed . [none built into 7 either] and won't find device ever until you add it.

 

[Schubert]

Faladu, thank you for your reply.

The motherboard CD that came with my custom built computer has only XP and Vista drivers (Windows 7 hadn't been released then). So I'll try to install the JMicron driver from this CD and then once that's done, I'll reboot and update the driver from within Device Manager.

I'll let you know what happens.

 

[Schubert]

Success

I downloaded a current version of the driver from JMicron's ftp site. Then, thanks to Faladu's comment, I looked for an installer file in the unzipped driver file. I found setup.exe. Everything then went smoothly: I rebooted and the external eSata HD now shows up in W7 like it does in XP.

 

[Faladu]

Awesome! Glad to read it! External can be flaky, I notice the time to actually give me the drive letter, to use drives, varies, I am using staring at my file manager waiting, tick tock tick tock.