GoFlex, GoFlex Desk, GoFlex Pro, GoFlex Slim, & GoFlex Turbo

[albert_e]

I just bought a Seagate GoFlex Dest 3TB External Hard Drive. (USB 3.0)

I use a win XP SP3 laptop  (Lenovo ThinkPad T400) -- I do not have the admin rights on this machine as it is my work laptop. I believe Autorun/Autoplay is turned on for DVD and USB drives.

Now ...

I powered on the hard drive and plugged it into the laptop via USB.

After briefly trying to detect and install the hardware drivers, I got the Blue Screen of Death (BSoD):

A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.

If this is the first time you've seen this Stop error screen, restart your computer. If this screen appears again, follow these steps: 

Check to make sure any new hardware or software is properly installed. If this is a new installation, ask your hardware or software manufacturer for any Windows updates you might need. 

If problems continue, disable or remove any newly installed hardware or software. Disable BIOS memory options such as caching or shadowing. If you need to use Safe Mode to remove or disable components, restart your computer, press F8 to select Advanced Startup Options, and then select Safe Mode.

Technical Information:

*** STOP: 0x0000007E (0xC0000005, 0x804EF1A0, 0XBA5237AC, 0XBA5234A8)

Beginning dump of physical memory
Physical memory dump complete.
Contact your system administrator or technical support group for further
assistance.

After the laptop rebooted, I plugged in the drive into a different USB port and the same story repeated.

To test whether the drive is readable at all, I cnnected it to my friend's Windows Vista laptopn. It was detected fine, drivers were installed automatically in a few seconds and it was ready to go. it showed 2.72 TB of disk capacity, showed some preloaded software files, let me read and write data to it fine.

I then also connected it to a Western Digital live streaming media player -- and it was detected fine. It could read the photos and files on the hard drive fine.

I then connected it again to the Win XP laptop and the BSoD happened again.

What is happening?

Is this drive compatible with WinXP at all?  (the product box does say so)

What do I need to get this to work on a Win XP laptop? Is the issues with my laptop?

Thanks!

[kenji57]

So did you try Microsoft's suggestion of starting in safe mode?

It sounds as if there is a problem with the drivers, but just to be sure it isn't something else I suggest using your friends machine to copy all the files off the drive to somewhere (just in case you ever want them, but you probably don't need them) and  format the drive.

Start your PC in safe mode and try troubleshooting in Computer Management, uninstall / re-install the drivers for the disk drive and USB mass storage

[albert_e]

Our work laptops dont even let us boot into safe mode -- not enough permissions.

I will take the help of our IT department to troubleshoot it.

However, I would like to know if this drive (when used as-is as a external USB drive) is compatible with winXP without any additonal steps like partitioning it using the DiscWizard or upgrading your BIOS?

That would determine if I should keep it or return it.

Thanks.

[albert_e]

I tried the same thing on a different work laptop that has Win XP

Same result ... i.e., BSoD and reboot

I need to try it on a non-work Win XP machine to see if this has to do with Win XP or configurations at my workplace

[kenji57]

I don't have a Goflex desk but I have a couple of other Seagate external drives that work fine with XP. 

You could try my other suggestion about formatting the drive. I suspect it is something about the policies on your work computers, they seem to have them locked down. If it was a general Win XP problem these forums would be flooded with similar posts.

[albert_e]

Hi,

Today I was able to connect this 3TB external drive to another Winodws XP machine.

It was detected fine, a few drivers were installed fine, and it worked perfectly.

(That XP machine was previously connected to a similar drive in the past and the seagate 'Dashboard' software was also installed at that time. No issues are known to have occured with the past 3TB drives -- both Seagate and Western Digital - in that XP machine.)

So I can rule out the suspiscion that this drive will not work with any Win XP machine,

Now I need to specifically check if this will work with my home laptop  -- It is in another country currently so I can only research but not experiment,

My home laptop is a DELL Vostro 1500 - bought in late 2007, running Win XP

Tried googling but cant figure out if this supports 3TB externals. Any pointers please?

Thanks all!