Western Digital My Book Drivers Xp

Just purchased Western Digital Essential Edition 500 GB My Book 2.0 USB external drive. Windows sees the hardware, but refuses to recognize any drives defined on it.

According to the documentation that came with the drive, it should have installed some startup software when first connected. That didn't happen. The drive is correctly identified under Disk Drives in the Windows Device Manager.

However, Disk Management fails to see it. I see two other internal drives there, along with my CD and DVD drives.

I considered the number of drives might be an issue and disconnected one of the hard drives. The WD drive still didn't show up. I considered that the drive might be assigned a particular letter, but reassigning existing drives to where 'E' and 'F' were open, did not help. I am running Windows XP SP2 on a Compaq Presario. My USB ports are 2.0.

All drivers are latest available. I have seen conflicting information about whether or not Service Pack 2 might be the issue. Going back to SP1 isn't really an option. I really want to use this drive, but I am fast approaching the 30-day return policy limit. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. While some claim they have the latest the only way I can tell is if the owner reveals make/model of machine and the motherboard and more driver versions. A bum USB cable.

A port that is not really USB 2.0 4. A port that has failed. WD should not help. Better than 99% of the time it's the machine at fault and not their product. No one has cracked the problem of how to repair our machines cheaply enough to not have to charge for it. If you feel WD should perform the repair then what can be said. But if it never works, return is as defective.

December 7, 2012. Manufacturer: Western Digital. Filename: WD_SES_Driver_Setup_x86.zip. File size: 275 KB. OS: Windows XP/Vista/7. Your new Western Digital My Passport/My Book hard drive requires a special communications channel (SCSI) between your PC and the drive to enable certain features such.

I have several USB ports on the machine, so I will give the others a shot. Probably have a spare cable around too. As for the drivers, if I don't have the latest, then I don't know where to find them. I've visited all the related sites I could think of and none had newer versions.

I did actually find an update for one of the USB drivers, and applied it. It made no difference. I tried the drive on a W2K machine I have and got the same results. However, I am not sure whether the USB ports are 2.0 on it or not. I am sure that the ones on the XP machine are 2.0. As for WD's responsibilities--I made my purchase based on what they advertised the drive to be compatible with. I don't necessarily expect them to fix my problem.

However, I do expect them to assist me in determining whether their product is at fault or not. If they are unwilling to do so, then I have to assume it is. (I don't know if you've seen the 'manual' that comes with this thing, but it is two pages.

Their support site doesn't provide any more information either.). Okay, you're getting outside of my experience. Motherboard: ASUS A7V8Z-LA Chipset(s): VIA KM400A VIA VT8237 (USB?) How would I determine the version of chipset drivers? Where would I find updates? How would a go about applying such updates? BTW, I'm going to take the drive to work with me tomorrow and give it a shot on my PC there. It's a Dell, about a year old.

If it doesn't work on it, I'll probably call it quits. If it does, I may just break down and buy a new PC. (Not that I can afford to, but really can't afford not to either. Having gone through 2 weeks of hell trying to recover a system backed up on DVDs.) I've revisited VIA and the MS sites.

Basically, it appears to be a know issue. MS has a fix, but doesn't feel comfortable with it. So you have to open a service call with them for which there is a charge (and it still may not work).

The VIA article is at You can follow the link from there to the MS site, if interested. The link you provided was for some PCI card but we need to be sure the mainboard chipset drivers are current. What's on the XP or 2000 CD may get the OS working but you often find USB inoperable. 'How would I determine the version of chipset drivers? Where would I find updates? How would a go about applying such updates?' See the link at the top of this post.

And the versions are in the Device Manager. Which I don't bother checking when the owner doesn't know. It's my clue to just get the latest and move forward. Followed the link. Picked up a couple of new drivers for chips on the motherboard. Still have the same situation.

The drive is there, but Windows doesn't see any partitions or recognize the format. I'm taking the thing to work with me today. If it doesn't work on my PC there, it goes back. If it does, then I really don't know what I'll do.

I appreciate your patience and attempts to assist. Having pulled a short stent on a help desk, I understand what it's like trying to diagnose something without having direct access to it. There's probably one little bit of key information that I'm failing to tell you, but until we hit on a solution, it won't be apparent what it is. Thanks again. I'll let you know how it goes on my work PC. I just ran into the same problem on a client's machine. Phone View Full Version Free Download Mac. His machine simply didn't know what it was looking at, even though it was clearly there.

Go back to installing the drivers - Control Panel, System, Hardware, Device Manager. Find the drive. Right click on it and select Properties. Go to Driver, Update Driver. Only this time, when it tells you Windows sees other drivers, follow that path and select WINDOWS' drivers, *not* Western Digital's. Free Download Highly Compressed Games 100 Working on this page.

What had happened on the client's computer is that he'd attempted to install the drive via USB only (forgetting to push the button to start the drive) and when Windows didn't see the driver, he installed the Windows 98SE driver from wdc.com. So windows was trying to use the driver for the WRONG operating system. Had he physically powered up the drive first, Windows would have recognized the drive and installed the proper drivers on the first attempt. And that's why I get paid the big bucks. I hope your solution is as simple (and in my years of experience, it's the SIMPLE reason that caused the problem 99.9999% of the time.) Best wishes! I appreciate your advice, but this time it wasn't applicable.

I had tried the drive on three different machines and experienced the same problem on each one. In the end, WD support advised me to exchange the drive, which I did.

I received the replacement a couple of days ago. I had it up and running in 5 minutes time. It worked perfectly out of the box. I had just got a bad unit the first time. It was extremely frustrating, as I had purchased it to use as a quick way to back up my entire system after recovering from a recent hard disk failure. Having put more hours than I care to think about into recovering my data and reinstalling applications, I wanted to be sure I didn't have to go through the same again.

Having read reviews of this device, I was expecting a quick and simple installation. That was one of the primary reasons I chose it. Of course, that is what I got in the end. However, my initial experience was so far from expectations that I was on the brink of returning the unit for a refund and trying someone else's product. After all is said and done, my only real complaint is the amount of time it took to get someone at WD support to realize the unit was defective.