external hard drive

colin13

it aint starting on start up of pc??? have to unplug connection at back and then reinsert plug any 1 got any suggestion how I can get hard drive to work on start up

googler

You mean Windows won't recognise the drive if it's plugged in when you power up the machine, but does when you unplug and re-plug the drive? Is there an activity light on the external drive? Is that flashing as windows boots up?

By 'recognise' do you mean the Autoplay dialog box?

If you power up the PC with the drive connected, and look in 'My Computer' (XP) or 'Computer (Vista), does the external drive show up in the list of drives there?

colin13

yes to first part yes light flashing,,went to autoplay but it says music files in auto play?? got me beat,,ty for ur replie so far

xp os when i go to my computer b4 i unplug and replug it does not show up

googler

Go to Help and Support on your start menu, and search in help for 'Autoplay'

This should give you two results at least - one of which is

"To change how your computer handles multimedia content"

Follow the directions in this, when the drive is connected and recognised, to change the way XP handlles this drive when it detects it. Change the 'music files' default to whatever is appropriate, and in the 'Select an action' box, choose 'Open Folder.....'

See if that forces it on next start-up.

How many drives do you have listed on 'My Computer' ?

colin13

floppy c d e and f so 5 in total

googler

Do these have drive labels?

I'm guessing C is your OS

D/E both optical drives

F is your external?

So when you tried to start up the PC, you only had C,D,E listed, and F appears when you reconnent the external HDD?

colin13

googler wrote: »

Do these have drive labels?

I'm guessing C is your OS

D/E both optical drives

F is your external?

So when you tried to start up the PC, you only had C,D,E listed, and F appears when you reconnent the external HDD?

correct

colin13

changed my connection,,put drive connector in to a cheap USB hub,changed usb ports and all is well

travis.b

yeh same thing happened to me where the drive changed from 'f' to 'h' which just meant that i had to change the autoplay function once for it to recognise the drive on start up