Problem with XP and external USB drives in our organization (Problem found - McAfee)

[TEEZLE]

For some reason today, people in our org (approx. 200 computers) are giving trouble with USB drives being assigned a letter in Windows Explorer. The drives show up in Computer Management and in the tray are with an assigned letter (like when you want to remove them). But for some reason the drives do not show up with a drive letter in Windows Explorer. We tried Intel chipset updates, changing drive letters....etc Still no go. When you have the drives plugged in and restart the o.s. they show up fine. But when you unplug them when the o.s. is up then plug them back in, windows explorer doesn't show it?!?!

Thanks in advance.
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[corkyg]

Are they self powered or do they rely on USB power?

 

[Paperlantern]

That really SHOULDNT matter, if it works when the system boots from scratch, just not when plugged in fresh, the drive is getting power, and the power method is moot.

Does it work in safe mode?

How about completely blowing out the USB hub in device manager and letting the system reinstall it.

I would almost be suspecting some sort of virus problem if this is happening accross the board. Or if these are all very similar machines, a patch or piece of software is crippling the drive letter assigning capability of the OS.

 

[RebateMonger]

The most common conflicts with USB drive letters are with Network drives and with built-in memory card readers. Obviously, you should check for those possibilities.

But it seems you are saying that everything worked perfectly until TODAY and now many folks are having the identical problem?

If that's the case, and if you know of no global software that was recently assigned to those PCs, then you might want to look at a single PC that's having the problem, removing any recently-installed software or Windows updates. You probably should try disabling any AV on that PC, too. I've seen bad AV updates cause some pretty weird file access errors once in a while.

 

[TEEZLE]

The most common conflicts with USB drive letters are with Network drives and with built-in memory card readers. Obviously, you should check for those possibilities.

But it seems you are saying that everything worked perfectly until TODAY and now many folks are having the identical problem?

If that's the case, and if you know of no global software that was recently assigned to those PCs, then you might want to look at a single PC that's having the problem, removing any recently-installed software or Windows updates. You probably should try disabling any AV on that PC, too. I've seen bad AV updates cause some pretty weird file access errors once in a while.

No other software was recently installed. One thing that caught my attention you wrote about and got my bell ringing is that McAfee DAT files are updated daily. I am wondering if the latest DAT updates made something weird? I have been meaning to update to the latest McAfee 8.7i hotfix 3, maybe this should be done tomorrow while I am at it?

EDIT: This has been happening to USB powered drives and external powered drives in enclosures. I also did try removing all USB devices and controllers and letting them get "re-recognized".

EDIT#2: Two of our folks noted that after about a minute the drives show up in My Computer, wondering what's slowing them down from showing?

EDIT#3: Thanks to you all for the help, you guys are great!!

 

[RebateMonger]

EDIT#2: Two of our folks noted that after about a minute the drives show up in My Computer, wondering what's slowing them down from showing?

As already suggested, I'd take one of those "malfunctioning" PCs and do some multiple malware scans, too, with both online (MalwareBytes and SuperAntiSpyware) and offline (FSecure or other bootable Rescue CD). There's some nasty malware out there....

 

[JackMDS]

Plugging in and out multiple USB drives can create havoc to the letter assignments.

If you have USB drives that are used as constant (same drive same computer).

Plug them in, Open the disk Management, and assign them with higher Alpha letter (like x,y,z) so that they would be out of the E,F,G,H range that keeps changing when plugging transient USB flash drives.

 

[TEEZLE]

The culprit is McAfee VSE 8.7i. After removing the McAfee VSE 8.7i Hotfix 1, the drives showed up normally and quickly. I re-installed McAfee and the drives didn't show in My Computer!! I will install McAfee 8.7i hotfix 3 on some machines and see if the problems are fixed.

Will keep you all posted.

Thank you all!

 

[corkyg]

Good find!

 

[TEEZLE]

Installing VSE 8.7i Hotfix 3 did not resolve?!?! Going to have to dig deeper

 

[RebateMonger]

EDIT#2: Two of our folks noted that after about a minute the drives show up in My Computer, wondering what's slowing them down from showing?

The last time I saw an AV problem, it was because the AV (Computer Associates eTrust 8.0) was taking forever to scan a certain very large file. When folks opened a network folder, the AV was blocking access until it finished scanning that file. This just appeared out of the blue one day with a new AV definition update.

I'd guess that McAfee is blocking access to the USB disk until it can finish a pre-scan and it's hanging on something.

 

[TEEZLE]

The last time I saw an AV problem, it was because the AV (Computer Associates eTrust 8.0) was taking forever to scan a certain very large file. When folks opened a network folder, the AV was blocking access until it finished scanning that file. This just appeared out of the blue one day with a new AV definition update.

I'd guess that McAfee is blocking access to the USB disk until it can finish a pre-scan and it's hanging on something.

Thanks for the info. I did have a blank, formatted USB drive and it still did the same thing. I am thinking it's something to do with autorun being disabled in the McAfee policy and group policy? When i first insert the USB drive, mcshiled.exe shoots up to 50%. Once the drive is recognized by Windows, mcshiled.exe goes back down to 1%.

 

[TEEZLE]

We updated to VSE 8.7i hotfix 3. Seems to be the fix for it. I will test more and report back.