ME does not allocate external USB disk drive

[Ron Kleingeld]

My friend has purchased a 120GB external drive and when
this is powered on and then plugged in on the USB port,
Windows ME finds the new hardware and allocates a driver,
but it does not go as far as to put it in My Computer as
an available drive we can use. Anyone have any idea why
this is?

[Mike M]

Explorer won't assign a drive letter to your drive until it has been fdisked.
Have you done that? If not then that is the cause of your problem and what
follows may help.

Since you are using an external USB drive the way to fdisk and then format it
is to open a DOS window in Win Me and then run fdisk from the DOS prompt.
Enable large disk support, switch fdisk to access the usb drive and then make
your partitions. Normally one would do this from DOS by booting from a floppy
but since it is a usb drive you won't be able to see the drive from DOS and
therefore you need to do this from a DOS window running in Win Me.

For details of how to fdisk and format see the Microsoft Knowledge Base
article 255867 - "How to Use the Fdisk Tool and the Format Tool to Partition
or Repartition a Hard Disk" (http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=255867).
--
Mike Maltby MS-MVP



Ron Kleingeld > wrote:

> My friend has purchased a 120GB external drive and when
> this is powered on and then plugged in on the USB port,
> Windows ME finds the new hardware and allocates a driver,
> but it does not go as far as to put it in My Computer as
> an available drive we can use. Anyone have any idea why
> this is?

[Ron]

A great help, thank you!
>-----Original Message-----
>Explorer won't assign a drive letter to your drive until
it has been fdisked.
>Have you done that? If not then that is the cause of
your problem and what
>follows may help.
>
>Since you are using an external USB drive the way to
fdisk and then format it
>is to open a DOS window in Win Me and then run fdisk
from the DOS prompt.
>Enable large disk support, switch fdisk to access the
usb drive and then make
>your partitions. Normally one would do this from DOS by
booting from a floppy
>but since it is a usb drive you won't be able to see the
drive from DOS and
>therefore you need to do this from a DOS window running
in Win Me.
>
>For details of how to fdisk and format see the Microsoft
Knowledge Base
>article 255867 - "How to Use the Fdisk Tool and the
Format Tool to Partition
>or Repartition a Hard Disk"
(http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=255867).
>--
>Mike Maltby MS-MVP

>
>
>Ron Kleingeld >
wrote:
>
>> My friend has purchased a 120GB external drive and when
>> this is powered on and then plugged in on the USB port,
>> Windows ME finds the new hardware and allocates a
driver,
>> but it does not go as far as to put it in My Computer
as
>> an available drive we can use. Anyone have any idea why
>> this is?
>
>
>.
>

[Mike M]

Ron,

Hopefully that means your friend is now able to use their external usb drive.
At least I hope so. <g>

If not please post back and we will take it from there
--
Mike Maltby MS-MVP



Ron > wrote:

> A great help, thank you!