Hidden use of internet detected on my PC?

[MonthyPythonn]

I have a 500 GB My Book Essential edition that contains all of my music and videos (this is the model with the green ring around the power button). When I upgraded my computer to Windows 7 OS my computer is not able to discover the drive. I know that it is functioning because I have hooked it up to my television to watch the movies but for some reason it cannot be found. I tried updating the drivers and this did not help. I also tried running this hard drive on a computer that has Windows 7 64 bit OS but the drive remained unsearchable. Can anyone provide any information about why this drive cannot be located? Thanks for the help!

[rboynton]

This is really not the forum for this sort of problem, but we can certainly try to help!

1. First, try replacing the USB cable with a newer one. If possible, use the shortest cable that will work in your situation. Sometimes older motherboards use USB version 1.1 compatible hardware. If USB 2.0 hardware is plugged in, it may not provide enough power to make the drive work properly (or be recognized). Long cables only make this problem worse... especially as the cable gets older. Changing the USB cable is the easiest thing to do.

2. Windows 7 is much more permission based than earlier operating systems. Permissions on Windows 7 can drive you nuts! As such, there may be issues with permissions that were set on the external drive. If you set any kind of permissions on the drive (usually done by setting a password on a user account, or removing the "everyone" permission), then perhaps Windows 7 won't see the drive properly. This is a longshot, but worth looking at. The drive will still work connected to your TV (it does not care about permissions), but not Windows 7.

To test this, connect the drive to another computer with either XP or Vista installed. Look at the permissions on the drive/files to see if this is the case. Make the permission changes as needed to remove the explicit restriction, then add "everyone" with full access. Try plugging in the drive back into the Windows 7 system to see if that worked.