External hard drives refuse to mount

Hi,

I'm running Windows XP, service pack 2 with all recent updates
(laptop).

Forever I have been using various external hard drives, both USB (1
and 2) and Firewire, and they have always been hot-swappable. In
other words, I have plugged in an external hard drive, it mounted
automatically and brought up some wizard giving me a choice on what
program to run on it -- I almost always chose either the file
explorer.

Suddenly, drives don't mount automatically anymore. If I plug in an
external hard drive, I do get sound indication that XP sees it, but it
doesn't mount.

(I should add that the very same drives do still mount automaticlly on
other similarly configured Windows XP systems.)

I see the external drive with some tools, e.g.
Start->Programs->Accessories->System Tools->Disk Defragmenter,
where it shows up as "Unmounted Volume", and I can analyze it with the
Defragmenter, which in its report shows a number of its directories.
Other tools also show the external HD with its correct capacity, e.g.
Maxtor's MaxBlaster disk cloner and EZ Gig disk cloner. But the drive
is not mounted.

My questions for you:

- Have you encountered a problem like this -- external drives,
supposedly hot-swappable, not mounting automatically ? What is the
matter here?

- Perhaps I can work around the problem by manually mounting the
recalcitrant drive. How do you manually mount a drive in Windows XP?

Thanks for any help and advice,
Wolfgang

<snip>

> Suddenly, drives don't mount automatically anymore. If I plug in an
> external hard drive, I do get sound indication that XP sees it, but it
> doesn't mount.
>
> (I should add that the very same drives do still mount automaticlly on
> other similarly configured Windows XP systems.)
>
> I see the external drive with some tools, e.g.
> Start->Programs->Accessories->System Tools->Disk Defragmenter,
> where it shows up as "Unmounted Volume", and I can analyze it with the
> Defragmenter, which in its report shows a number of its directories.
> Other tools also show the external HD with its correct capacity, e.g.
> Maxtor's MaxBlaster disk cloner and EZ Gig disk cloner. But the drive
> is not mounted.
>
> My questions for you:
>
> - Have you encountered a problem like this -- external drives,
> supposedly hot-swappable, not mounting automatically ? What is the
> matter here?
>
> - Perhaps I can work around the problem by manually mounting the
> recalcitrant drive. How do you manually mount a drive in Windows XP?


Though drive usually automount...looks like you will have to go into disk
management
and assign the drive a letter.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/309000