I dropped my external hard drive on the floor (twice), and it stopped working.
i thought it may just be the case, so i took the drive to the nearest computer centre and asked if i could test it
it seemed to work fine on their computer (which looked like it was running XP), though there was something odd about the directory names (they seemed to all end in exe or something, but i'm not certain about this point). but i could access some files (images in my pictures folder), so it certainly seemed to be good enough
unfortunately, when i got it home, i'm having the same problems as before (i'm running vista)
when i plug it in, the little 'device found' icon appears, but no window
if i click on 'my computer', explorer hangs, and has to be shut down
if i then try and restart explorer, nothing happens (though explorer shows up as running in the task manager)
if i open any program which can browse through folders, this also crashes as soon i click on 'my computer'
if i restart the computer, it won't start with the drive connected, and this last time, even after the drive was removed, it repeatedly shut down during start-up, and gave a blue screen several times, telling me to consult technical help (it's possible these shut-downs were caused by overheating, but i don't know)
as such, i'm a little wary of even connecting it back to my computer, but i also don't want to just throw it away, when it does seem to work under certain circumstances
any help would be appreciated... and if there's any more information you need, please tell me and i'll provide it. i'm not very techy.
thanks
i thought it may just be the case, so i took the drive to the nearest computer centre and asked if i could test it
it seemed to work fine on their computer (which looked like it was running XP), though there was something odd about the directory names (they seemed to all end in exe or something, but i'm not certain about this point). but i could access some files (images in my pictures folder), so it certainly seemed to be good enough
unfortunately, when i got it home, i'm having the same problems as before (i'm running vista)
when i plug it in, the little 'device found' icon appears, but no window
if i click on 'my computer', explorer hangs, and has to be shut down
if i then try and restart explorer, nothing happens (though explorer shows up as running in the task manager)
if i open any program which can browse through folders, this also crashes as soon i click on 'my computer'
if i restart the computer, it won't start with the drive connected, and this last time, even after the drive was removed, it repeatedly shut down during start-up, and gave a blue screen several times, telling me to consult technical help (it's possible these shut-downs were caused by overheating, but i don't know)
as such, i'm a little wary of even connecting it back to my computer, but i also don't want to just throw it away, when it does seem to work under certain circumstances
any help would be appreciated... and if there's any more information you need, please tell me and i'll provide it. i'm not very techy.
thanks