SP2 and external hard drive problems

I have just installed SP2 on my machine. I have a Maxtor external firewire
hard drive. Prior to installation, I have had no problems accessing the
drive. Now, when I start Windows, the drive is not accessible. It appears
with the proper drive letters in Explorer (there are two partitions on the
drive), but when I click on the drive I get the following message: "M:\ is
not accessible. The specified network resource or device is not longer
available." However, the hard drive appears in device manager and the dialog
box indicates it is worker properly. I can access the properties dialog with
no problems. When I click on the Policies tab, I can change the optimization
settings. When I do make that change, both partitions on the drive suddenly
become accessible.

I thought that the problem may be related to the new security settings in
SP2. I have tried to completely disable the firewall, but this does not seem
to have resolved the problem.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks.

Jim Crotteau

On Fri, 10 Sep 2004 10:55:30 -0400, "Jim Crotteau"
wrote:

I have just installed SP2 on my machine. I have a Maxtor external firewire
hard drive. Prior to installation, I have had no problems accessing the
drive. Now, when I start Windows, the drive is not accessible. It appears
with the proper drive letters in Explorer (there are two partitions on the
drive), but when I click on the drive I get the following message: "M:\ is
not accessible. The specified network resource or device is not longer
available." However, the hard drive appears in device manager and the dialog
box indicates it is worker properly. I can access the properties dialog with
no problems. When I click on the Policies tab, I can change the optimization
settings. When I do make that change, both partitions on the drive suddenly
become accessible.

I thought that the problem may be related to the new security settings in
SP2. I have tried to completely disable the firewall, but this does not seem
to have resolved the problem.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Try reinstalling or updating the Firewire drivers which may have
changed with the SP2 install.

Peter Hutchison

"Jim Crotteau" wrote:

I have just installed SP2 on my machine. I have a Maxtor external firewire
hard drive. Prior to installation, I have had no problems accessing the
drive. Now, when I start Windows, the drive is not accessible. It appears
with the proper drive letters in Explorer (there are two partitions on the
drive), but when I click on the drive I get the following message: "M:\ is
not accessible. The specified network resource or device is not longer
available." However, the hard drive appears in device manager and the dialog
box indicates it is worker properly. I can access the properties dialog with
no problems. When I click on the Policies tab, I can change the optimization
settings. When I do make that change, both partitions on the drive suddenly
become accessible.

I thought that the problem may be related to the new security settings in
SP2. I have tried to completely disable the firewall, but this does not seem
to have resolved the problem.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks.

Jim Crotteau


Did you ever resolve your problem? I also have an external hard drive (Western Digital) that was available until I installed SP2. However, mine didn't even show up under Explorer and I was unable to get it activated. I uninstalled SP2 and it was available again.

Since I had just reinstalled XP Home edition within Windows I also tried to
install SP1 (I had a copy from MS on CD.) and it also wouldn't recognize the
hard drive. I now just have the version of XP (not an upgrade) that I bought
without any updates.

This is my first posting so I hope I'm doing this right.

Don O'Kane