Hi I hav an external drive WD. It has worked fine but this morning I can't open it.
My compurter seem to know it's there but it doesn't open. The autorun doesn't run.
On the bottom right it showes a plug in device. But when I go to my computer it's not listed among the drives.
Worse my pc will freeze up untill I unplug it.
HELP!!!

Karen, it sounds like the drive is using all your CPU's resourses. Try rebooting the computer with it unplugged and go into system/hardware/device manager and see if it is listed under disk drives. If it is try and delete it. Then plug it back in and see if the system finds it and reinstalls the proper drivers for it. If it is not listed, shutdown the computer, plug in the drive and reboot in safe mode and see if you can get back to device manager and try and remove it again. Hopefully all it is is a corrupted driver and when reinstalled things will work properly.

Since it is an external drive you might want to try it on another computer and verify the drive is functional. If it works fine on another computer it is likely you just have a bad driver and all that needs to be done is delete the bad one and reinstall it. I assume it is a USB drive so you may also want to try a different USB socket, they have been known to go bad as will especially if they supply power to a device.

Good luck

Thanks Marsha.
I did as you said to try but afraid it didn't help. My other pc is shot which is why I need this to work.
It has a lot of files on it that I realy don't want to lose. Lots of pix that can't be replaced.

sounds like windows being windows

as noted it sounds like the driver is eating your machine for some unknown reason.

if you know what drive letter it normally gets (c:\, d:\ e:\ etc) try using the command line to access the drive.

I'm thinking something internal to windows is trying to index the drive, can you hear the drive spinning when you plug it in?

also in task manager what is the CPU doing? if its hovering about 90-100% then its doing something, try leaving it for a while it may come back.

had this before where windows is trying to mount a usb stick as one drive, but that same drive is used by something else so it won't. and the stupid thing doesn't simply use another letter either. have you installed anything since you used the drive? software or hardware.

there is a disc manager in windows somewhere, that can see all drives regardless of what explorer says.

also device manager should be able to show you all connected USB devices, see if the drive is there.

this can be a real pain in the neck, but generally no damage is done.

I'm no expert but it sounds to me like the drive has died in some way. Because Windows is rejecting your drive, I would blame the drive itself rather than Windows.

Of course, I could be wrong (as I often am).

Can you see the drive in Device Manager and does it have an exclamation mark against it?

Hugs,

Katie x

Just trying to help

The drive is powering up I can hear it. When I plug it in I can hear that ding dong sound telling me it's there. It has an autorun bet it never runs. When working it's my G drive & I can't find it anywhere.
Last time this happend I right clicked on My Computer, than clicked Manage than click OK on my G drive.
But now there is nothing there.

I have a lot of files on this drive.

if the disc is spinning it should be ok, well unless it sounds like a disc sander of course. it also sounds like windows is seeing it, and then going into a loop.

do you have one of them usb memory sticks? if so plug that in and see what happens.

also do you have anything else that would qualify as a usb drive, thinking camera or mobile phone? these will use the same drivers, if they work they may 'reset' the settings in windows. if they don't the fault is defiantly windows.

an alternative is to try the drive in another machine.

failing that grab a 'linux live' cd and boot from that, using whatever default settings it wants (linux isn't that scary but its not worth playing with for this purpose) then plug the drive in and see if linux sees it, if so its definatly windows with the problem.

I've had this before its normally some sort of windows hiccup or possibly spyware.

one nasty I ended up removing blocked usb drives, the cd/dvd drives and various web sites basically to try and prevent removal tools being installed.. nasty.. amazing what a these idiots do.

but seriously try the disc in another machine and if possible a memory stick usb drive in your machine to see what happens.

if windows gets annoyed when you unplug this drive it has seen it, and is doing something but has not yet finished mounting it.

don't give up these things are sent to try you