Iomega external DVDRW device not recognized? anyone help???

[gallacher2001]

Ok guys my friend bought this drive a few months ago but never used it, he just recenty bought a "mini laptop" and he wanted to use the external dvd-rw drive with it.

The details for the drive: IOMEGA SUPER DVD WRITER DUEL FORMAT USB 2.0 16x

Both his and my pc have USB 2.0 enabled all my other stuff works fine but this drive won't. Now I checked the usual suspects...Checked the power, checked the drive to see if it was working, its certainly spinning etc so as far as I can see it seems to be working. I downloaded the most updated version of the software that goes with the drive and this didn't pick it up either...

When I connect the drive this is the message that I get: One of the USB deviced connected to this computer has malfunctioned, and windows does not recognise it.

Anyone got any ideas??? I am stumped....

Both laptops are running on XP sp3.

Thanks guys.

[Van Nugent]

A spinning drive doesn't mean the whole thing is working fine, especially when it's in a USB enclosure. The IDE to USB interface might be faulty. Try to take the drive out of the external enclosure then connect it to 1 of your desktop PCs as an internal drive to see if the drive works OK. If the drive is OK, you'll need to buy a new external enclosure for it.