win8.1 Windows install has stopped loading the driver(s) for External HDDs?

[ZakO]

Hi All,

 

I'm having a strange problem with the Windows 8.1 (fully updated) install on one of my laptops, when trying to use any 3.5" External HDD Windows refuses to load the driver(s). It only started happening today, previously I had used the external HDDs without any problem.

 

In device manager it just lists the drive as "Other Devices" -> "USB-SATA Bridge" and the info says:

The drivers for this device are not installed. (Code 28)

There are no compatible drivers for this device.

Driver Name: null
Class Guid: {00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}
Driver Date: 
Driver Version: 
Driver Provider: 
Driver Section: 
Driver Rank: 0x0
Matching Device Id: 
Outranked Drivers: 
Device Updated: false

I've tried:

 

- Uninstalling all USB drivers and letting Windows reinstall them

- Disabling all power management for USB ports

- Copying the drivers installed by the USB drives from a different Windows 8.1 install and manually loading them

 

The HDDs still work fine on other Windows 8.1 computers, and they work in Linux or Windows Virtual machines on the laptop. It just seems like something has gone strange with the particular install of Windows, I'm sure reinstalling Windows would fix it, but I'm trying to find the reason this has happened. 

 

Any ideas? Thanks.

[ZakO]

I couldn't work out what was causing this, since the laptop didn't have anything important on it I just reinstalled Windows. Everything working now.