Mass storage device
Those Optiplex systems have been nothing but a pain since they where first released. Especially now that they\'re getting older! If it\'s not an F6 driver issue, it\'s some obscure driver that does exist for windows 7, but it\'s like hunting Easter Eggs.. If ever you run into any issues with an Optiplex of any kind, please feel free to look me up specifically. I see these desktops more than any other brand and have worked on at least a thousand of them over the years.But to your problem! Yeah, the driver shouldn\'t be messed up if you just formatted the drive. Give this a shot:Now I don\'t have an XP machine in front of me, so I\'m doing this from memory:Left click your start button, then right click on "my computer." There should be an option that says "manage." Click that and a window will open. Click "disk management" in the left pane and give it a while to load. It could take a few minutes..Once that\'s done, at the bottom in the center there will be a list of all your drives. The external will be there since it\'s at least recognized in device manager. The next things I\'m going to talk about are all accomplished with right and left clicking for the most part.First, see if the drive is initialized. To do this, right click on the drive itself all the way at the left. Try every possible variation of options to initialize the disk if it\'s not initialized (there won\'t be options to initialize if it already is I\'m pretty sure). This is a lot faster of a process than determining exactly how it should be done - which I learned the hard way.Once it\'s initialized or doesn\'t need to be, next is to assign a drive letter to the partition.There may not even be a partition on the drive yet. If not, right click in the space where it shows the drive\'s capacity. Left click on "create partition" and make one. You can make one big partition or split it up, whatever will work best for your purposes.Once that\'s done, or you already have a partition but still can\'t designate a drive letter, you\'ll want to see if it\'s mounted and initialized.To do this, again, right click on the partition you want to use and left click on those options. Try all possible combinations of options one at a time until it works.Once all this is done, you should now be able to right click on the partition and left click on "change/choose/whatever a drive letter." Pick one. Doesn\'t matter what it is, though if you pick a drive letter closer to Z, there\'s less chance that when you reboot that drive letter will be automatically reassigned by windows to something else and corrupt all your downloads and/or applications you may have installed. Plus, if you have your my documents folder there, this would be really handy to do.If this fixed your problem, please let us know. If not, let me know too so I may put my brain to work and think of other solutions. I\'ve ran into this exact issue many times. This is just one way I fixed it.
