Hi,

I am using Western Digital's 120GB Passport (External USB drive).
Model Number: WD 1200XMSC

It was working fine with my Dell laptop (Windows Vista-Home Basic) and
my Office PC (Win XP).
I was able to copy files from Laptop/ PC to HDD and vice-versa.

One worst day, I printed some pics on my Home Canon IP4000 Printer by
commenting it to USB port. When printing was done I removed Printer
connection and shutDown the laptop.

Next day when I Attached my WD External drive I got this Error saying
-"One of the USB devices attached to this computer has malfunctioned,
and Windows does not recognize it. For assistance in solving this
problem, click this message."


When I clicked the message I got A DialogBox stating USB's status as
Unknown USB device!!!

With my fingers crossed, I tried connecting my WD HardDisk to my
Office PC(Win XP). I got the same Error.

Can anybody please help me here?

++Thanks
P.J. Soni _____________

Try this, Disconnect all USB devices except keyboard and mouse.
Go to: Start>Run>type DEVMGMT.MSC press OK
Scroll to the bottom to Universal Serial Bus Controllers.
Right click each one, one-at-a-time, and click Uninstall.
Reboot, which will reinstall your USB ports. Connect your devices
and let us know if it worked.



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<prashant.soni@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:5aa5659d-e28c-4a5f-9207-8286409fc585@59g2000hsb.googlegroups.com...

On Apr 15, 12:46*am, prashant.s...@gmail.com wrote:
You may have to do a complete "refresh" of the USB devices. When you
have the hard drive connected, uninstall the "unknown" device and
disconnect the unit. Then, reconnect and if luck, the drive may re-
appear correctly. If not, you will need to uninstall all USB / HID
devices, the uninstall the USB controllers and reboot. Upon XP
restart, it should re-detect the USB controllers and then you need to
re-conenct the various USB devices.

If after all this the drive still does not detect correctly, you need
to try on a different PC so as to "recover" your files. If it still
does not list your files, then sad to say but you may have lost the
files and you will need to format the drive to test. If the format
fails, then you need to get the WD diagnostics to test the disk
"integrity."

On Apr 15, 11:44*am, "PaulM" <P...@paulsxp.com> wrote:
Dear Paul,

Thx for quick response!
I tried it.
I removed All-but-one entry from Devicemanager thr' 'Uninstall' as My
KBD and Mouse got frozen.
After restarting my PC, Everything got restored...(obvious).

Then I connected My WD Passport. I got Msg - "Found New Hardware"
Unknown Device
After some seconds MSG at Tray changed to - "Found New Hardware" Your
new hardware is installed and ready to use". (momentary smile)

However in Devicemanager under 'USB Controller' it was showing
'Unknown Device'!!! (Previously it used to display WD 1200 External
Hard Disk (or something like that) while diplaying message for New
Device found!

After 4-5 Seconds I again got that Ugly message - "USB devices
attached to this computer has malfunctioned..."


I also tried implementating ur suggestion on Windows-Vista (my home
laptop). Howeevr as I UNINSTALLED 1st device it automatically pop-up a
dialog saying - "driver for newly found device (controller) is being
installed"!!!!! and automatically installes the uninstalled device!

Please advice.

On Apr 15, 10:59*pm, prashant.s...@gmail.com wrote:
Re-do this process with the "unknown" WD drive still connected. By
uninstalling the "Unknown" device when connected, it should remove the
"last known" USB ID for this device. Then disconnect and re-connect
this drive. It should be re-detected correctly.

You may have several "left-over" device settings in Device Manager and
you should clean this up. One way is to select "Show hdden
devices..." after starting Device Manage with the following done in a
CMD window:

set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1
cd %SystemRoot%\System32
start devmgmt.msc

And remvoe the "phantom" devices.