2gb Passport Ultra not working in Windows XP

WD External Drives WD Portable Drives
1

Hello this is the third WD Passport drive I have. I just bought this one last Thursday. Of the three, this is the only one not working in Windows XP. I work on industrial computer systems and test computer systems that still reply on Windows XP.

When I plug the drive in to a USB port on the Windows XP machine. The security program pops up and asks me for the password that I set. It accepts it, but after that Windows XP does not see it.

I have another WD 2gb USB drive that works perfect with XP and a GB WD USB Drive that works perfect with XP. This one does not. The other 2GB is NOT and Ultra, the 3gb IS an Ultra.

I don’t understand this. This 2gb drive is basically an XCOPY of the other 2gb drive. I used my Windows 10 machine to set up the password on this drive and then XCOPY spent close to two days copying the drive and it is perfectly readable on the Windows 10 machine.

I am upset that my Windows XP Industrial test computer is not seeing this new drive.

Why is that? The Device manager sees the Mass Storage Controller but does not have a driver.

P.S. - I just plugged it in to my work Windows 7 laptop and it works perfectly. This is the only one of the Passports that do not work on the Windows XP Machine, It is very new. I just got it on Black Thursday at Walmart. Aggravating…

2

Hello,

Have you tried replacing the USB cable. Also updating the USB drivers on your computer?

3

If this is indeed a new generation WD Passport, then bear in mind it comes factory-formatted as exFAT, which is a file system designed for newer version of Microsoft Windows with limited support for Windows XP and requires a dedicated driver from Microsoft’s site.

If you format your unit to NTFS using a newer version of Windows then the unit could work in the current system.

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4

If you format the drive, how to you get the password protection back on it?

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5

Password protection is independent from the unit’s file system as long as the unit is formatted as a regular disk through Windows.

6

It’s a matter of the file system not compatible with 32 bit xp.

I don’t that there is driven that can fix that?

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