xp does not recognize my wd external hard drive. It did 2 months ago until I disconnected the usb plug before it was safe to
do so. Now when I go into MY COMPUTER it does not even show up there. When I plug it in the light comes on and I can feel the disk
spinning but no recognition that it's even there. Tried hd on another xp system and it works fine. could this be a registry or mbr problem. Thanks, Glenn

ps. I went into device manager but didn't know what to look for. Nothing pointed to my drive

no yellow marks in device manager.try to install onother usb device in there like keyboard or mouse to make sure usb port is working,also try to plug hd into different usb port,now that part you propley have allready tryed,just thought i would sugest this.Also make sure usb ports are turend on in bios.One of the Mods will give you better advice when they get on,I myself am still learning too.

Andrew, thanks for getting back to me so soon. I do not have another usb device so I am going to buy a flash drive and try your suggestion. I had 3 but I made the mistake of letting my 2- 22 year old sons borrow them. In the future I will only lend them things I don't need returned. I also tried different usb ports, same results. Just went back into device manager
and next to all of my usb controllers is an exclamation mark in a yellow circle. What is this trying to tell me?
And as for checking the bios, I'm going to have to google that because I am not sure what to do in that case or even how to access it.
By the way my system is XP PRO 32 bit version.
Andrew, after I post this I am going to start another thread because my
computer did not come with the windows xp pro 32 bit setup cd rom and I don't think I have a reinstall partition either, also
I couldn't the WINNT32 file on my c-drive. I look forward to hearing from you and anybody else who can help me with this situation.
Glenn

first thing i would try is resetting the bios to defaults or better still popping the battery out for ten seconds, if its worked in the past its unlikely to be a driver, unless theres stuff on there you need (in which case probably best getting them on the other computer) then right click computer > manage > storage > disk managment (think its same on xp) find the drive and re format it if its shows up.

you asked a questain on your other post what does pm mean.It means to private message that person.

If you can feel the drive spinning then the USB port is working fine and you are more likely looking at a software issue. Resetting the BIOS won't do anything either.

1) Right click My Computer and goto manage.
2) Goto Disk Management

Can you see the drive in there? (Please don't format it. That's not good advice I'm afraid)

There's a chance you may have put another usb device such as a memory stick into that port and it has taken the drive letter that the external drive wants to use.

If you can see the drive in Disk Management, right click on it, and select Change Drive Letter and Paths, then click on Change. Select a drive letter that is unused and click OK. The USB drive may now be accessible.

Personally I like to boot into a boot CD such as Hirens to eliminate any Operating System glitches. If it shows up in the boot CD then you would be looking at tweaking the registry section for known mounted devices (assuming you didn't see the drive in Disk Management).

Graham I went into computer management like you said and all that was listed was my c-drive and internal cd-rom D. Earlier when I went into device manager everything under usb controllers and video controller had an exclamation point in a yellow circle before it. If you think that this might require a registry tweak do you think you could walk me through it. As far as the registry goes all I know how to do is start it either by regedit or by msconfig

Glenn
Also you mentioned that I might have plugged in another usb device into the slot but I don't have one.

Try updating the drivers on those with the exclamation mark

I would say thats a driver isue like popeye said update or find the drivers you need

Everyone, thanks for trying to help me with my USB HD problem and sorry it took so long to get back. I couldn't fix the problem, I tried everything suggested and nothing worked. I ended up doing a reinstall, and that's where the problems started. For 2 to 3 weeks down time with what ended up being an 8 pound brick, I was able to borrow a friends computer and get this thing back on line after many hours of on-line searches. I didn't realize that a reinstall on a dell did not include All of the drivers that are needed to get my computer up and running. Fortunately the dell web site was able to tell me which drivers I needed. Long story short I ended up learning much more than I planned on. Thanks again, Glenn