External drive not recognised

Phyllis

Hello,

I bought a 1TB Seagate external drive and have connected this to my computer via USB but the drive doesn't show up in My Computer (Windows XP, Service Pack 3). It appears in disk management with no drive letter. If I assign a different drive letter the external drive is now recognised in disk management as Disk 1 Expansion Drive (G) - Healthy (Active). It has a blue bar indicating that it is formatted but the drive still doesn't show in My Computer.

When I click on the blue bar I have the following options:

Open
Explore
Change drive letter and paths
Format
Delete partition

The option to 'mark partition as active' is unavailable. No drive with the letter G shows in My Computer. In System Device Manager, the external drive's properties show that it is enabled and working properly and that its Location is 0.

If I right-click on the small rectangular label to the left (designated Disk 1) I get the options of Properties and Help. Clicking on Properties shows that "This device is working properly" and is enabled. Its location is given as "0" although I have given it the drive letter "G", as which it shows up in "My Computer Information - Hardware" as "Local Disk (non-partitioned)".

When I try to Format I get the message: "The operation did not complete because the partition or volume is not enabled. To enable the partition or volume, restart the computer." If I leave the drive plugged in and restart my computer the system will not reboot as it seems to be trying to boot from the (empty) external drive.

I've downloaded the Seatools for Windows utility from the Seagate website but am unable to run this on my computer (Error message: Msi launch conditions failed. Installation aborted.)

Sorry for the lengthy post but this problem has been bugging me for ages so any advice on how to access the drive would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance.