Resolved USB hard drive or pen drive shown with yellow triangle in device manager

When I plugged my USB 1TB hard drive into my laptop, running Win 7 Home Premium 64 bit version, it fails to show in My Computer. I checked device manager and the drive is listed there with a yellow triangle against it with the message "Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver may be corrupted or missing. (Code 39) ". I have uninstalled the drive using device manager, restarted windows and then plugged drive into USB port again. Notification area says "installing device driver software " and then says "device driver software was not correctly installed ". Once again the drive is listed in device manager with yellow triangle and previous message. I tried to delete the drivers listed against the failed drive "disc.sys and partmgr.sys" from the drivers folder in system32 but Windows won't allow me to do this.
From device manager I have clicked update driver and Windows has reported that the current installed driver is correct.
I have subsequently inserted a USB pen drive into my laptop and it failed to appear in My Computer and was listed in device manager with yellow triangle and messages shown previously.
The USB hard drive and USB pen drive have both been inserted into another laptop and they both work fine.
Both drives were working fine on this laptop 2 days ago.
Can anyone suggest how I can rectify my problem?

 

Hi Sparky7407, Have you tried installing in Safe Mode?
Have you got any other hardware in other ports or are you using a hub? Neil.

 

There is no hardware connected and I'm not using a hub.

I tried deleting the driver files in safe mode but was still unable to do so.

Have been doing some research on Trusted Installer (it has control of deleting drivers in System 32 folder) and have found info on changing permissions for driver files from Trusted Installer to my user account.

Will post further when I've tried this.

Would welcome any further ideas though.

 

In Device Manager > View > have you tried to see if they are under any of the headings?
Have you visited the HD mfg site to see if they have Drivers? Neil.

 

Delete/Uninstall all of the USB ports in Device Manager and reboot. Once Windows has finished with its "Found New Hardware" routine, test the USB ports again.

 

Neil

The USB hard drive was working fine one day using the standard windows drivers but wouldn't work the following days.

Deleted the USB ports as suggested and after windows had reinstated them the USB hard drive and USB pen drive both failed again with the same messages in device manager.

 

Do the USB ports work when running a different Operating System (OS) from a Live CD? If not, the issue is probably hardware related.

A Live CD/DVD or USB flash drive contains a complete bootable computer operating system (OS). When you boot a computer from it, the OS loads into, and then runs from memory instead of a hard drive. This allows you to run an OS without installing it or making any changes to a computer's current configuration.

To create one, download an ISO file containing the OS you want to use, (such as Ubuntu, Slax or Zorin), then use something like ISO Recorder to burn it to a CD/DVD or USB key.

Now boot your computer from this disc/key and your computer will be running that OS instead of the one on its hard drive.

When you're done, simply reboot your PC from the hard drive.​

 

The USB hard drive and USB pen drive both work fine when inserted into my partner's laptop so I don't think there's a hardware problem.

Have found out how to change permissions from Trusted Installer to my user account for the problem driver files mentioned in Device Manager. Plan to delete these files tomorrow and replace them with copies from my partner's laptop.

Will post results.

 

Step one would be to determine if the problem lies with the hardware or the software within the problem laptop. "Why?" Simply because if it is a hardware issue, no amount of fiddling with software will solve the problem.

 

I resolved the problem by rolling back to an image taken a week before the problem occurred. Both the USB hard rive and the USB pen drive now work fine.
Thanks for all your suggestions.

 

Good to hear the problem's been resolved. Thanks for posting your solution.