losingrocks

Please someone help me out here. A few days ago my external HDD stopped working on my laptop, and whenever I try to reconnect it to see if I can uninstall and reinstall the driver, I keep getting the message "windows - device timeout - The specified I/O operation on \Device\Harddisk1\DR17 was not completed before the time-out period expired."

For some reason, the number after Harddisk1\DR keeps increasing by 2 after each message, too(i.e. dr17, dr19, dr21, etc). The message gives me three choices: cancel, try again, and continue. None of them fix anything and they keep popping up until I turn off or disconnect the external HDD, and certain functions in my computer (such as device manager, computer management, etc) freeze up or become slow as soon as I try to connect the HDD.

I know the HDD itself is fine, needs no formatting, and isn't corrupted or anything of the sort because I've tried it with other computers and it works just fine, and all the data is still there. The USB ports in my laptop are fine also, they work perfectly when I connect other devices, so I know something about Windows is the problem here.

I should point out that when I connect the HDD, Device Manager does recognize it and adds ST332062 0A USB Device under Disk Drives, and also adds USB Mass Storage Device under Universal Serial Bus Controllers.

I've tried connecting the HDD through all the USB ports in my laptop, rescanning the disks in Disk Management, as well as uninstalling the hidden Generic Volumes in Device manager, I've tried running CHKDSK I: /R in the command prompt (I:\ is the drive letter I permanently assigned to this HDD so that it doesn't randomly switch letters with my virtual drives, which I've also turned off to see if they were the problem), and I've tried rebooting many many times, but no dice.

I've really run out of ideas, and I can't find a fix anywhere on the net.

Please help!

linderman

Welcome to TSF:




I "believe" your problem is a corrupt USB controller driver, the only think I can think of to fix that would be a windows XP repair install / it wont mess with your data or programs, but it will strip all drivers from the windows system OS

so upon completion you will need to reinstall all drivers, service packs not on your wiondows CD and reinstall all your windows updates

make sure you have your windows install key code handy before you begin this, make sure you either have all drivers for your systems hardware or know where to get them ?

here is the guide for repair install

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XP...install.htm#RI



keep us posted with your progress



best regards

joe