New Passport Ultra worked OK, then the program stopped working (starting). Support told me to reinstall the software, this requires .zip program (didn’t need for initial install), have to purchase a program to unzip. Install 7 zip program fine, wont open the WD downloads. Went to Control Panel, repaired software, restarted, nothing.
Nice harddrive is now a nice paperweight. If no solution from you folks, it goes back and I’ll get a competitor’s hard drive. Too many problems with this thing.
Hi and welcome to the WD community.
If you go to computer, are you able to see the drive? it should have the name “My Passport” if the drive shows up, this means that the drive is working properly. Also if you are using windows, zip files are able to be opened without using a specific software.
Using Windows 7, 64 bit. computer sees the drive but will not open .zip files. I get “application not found”. When I called support they told me I would need to install a zip program to open them. And I thought you always needed Winzip or some other purchased product to open these files.
Why didn’t I need it when I first installed the files?
What happens if I uninstall, then re-connect the Passport? Will it act like it did the first time out of the box?
I gues the question is really: Why do I need to unzip files now if I did not need to on the initial install?
Thanks for thinking about my problem.
PS: I have an older WD external hard drive that works fine.
What happens if you right click on the file and on the open with option, you select windows explorer? Regarding the zip file, this seems to be when you download the latest version from the WD support site, the version that is inside the drive once you access it is not zipped which you can also try to install.
Windows Explorer should be able to open zip files, as ArMak mentioned. But if somehow the file association has been lost, then you may need to set that up again.
As an alternative, download 7zip, which is a good free alternative to Winzip and can handle zip files and a whole load of other different compressed formats.
But this has nothing into do with WD or WD software, it’s the configuration of your Windows set-up itself.
OK, I got the files unzipped and uninstalled the previous version of the WD smartware. So, I right click on the download, run as admin, little blue WD head pops up, asks me if I want to allow it to make changes to the computer, I say yes, then Windows Explorer stops working.
Is it this miserable Windows Explorer causing the problem?
