Harddrive works fine, but not recognized by Win XP

[Unstop]

Here is an odd problem.
I have an RCA Lyra (RD2780) portable audio/video player. It has a 20Gb HDD in it. I have had this thing for years now and I love it. But I am now having a weird problem with it.
There is about 13Gb of music, movies and videos on this thing and they all play perfectly. I have NEVER had a problem with transferring audio or video to this thing.
Well, about 6 months ago we got a smaller MP3 player for my wife and haven’t used this thing in a while. Now that my daughter is getting older (she is 9) she is really getting into music and was wanting an iPod. Well, since we had this Lyra just laying around, we decided to give it to her to use.
Here is where it gets strange. I charged the Lyra then fired it up. It booted perfect and played the music and video that we had previously put on it a year ago great.
But, of course, my daughter wants newer songs and videos on it. So I plug it up to my PC through USB, just like I have always done and then Windows XP says “Found New Device” then says the name of it. But the name it has is just a bunch of squares with a couple of other strange symbols thrown in for good measure. Then it askes for drivers. Then, after telling it to search automatically, it comes back with “no Drivers could be found” and shows the “Device not installed correctly” warning pop-up over the sys tray clock.
I can go to “My Computer” and there is no new drive listed and it doesn’t show up in “Disk Management” either. But if I go into the “Device Manager” it shows up (with that same square/symbol name under the “Other Devices” heading. If I click it and go to Properties, it says this:
Device type: Other devices
Manufacturer: Unknown
Location: Location 0 (then there is another, totally different string of crazy blocks and symbols)

So, at this point I took the Lyra apart and pulled out the HDD, hooked up my adapter, and put it on my PC as a slave. After booting my PC it SEES THE HDD AS IT SHOULD !!!
It recognizes it just like it used to, and I can access all my files, music and video.
OK..so I went ahead and reformatted the HDD in FAT32 like it is supposed to and then reinstalled it into the Lyra so I could reload the OS and other software, which I had previously gotten off the RCA website.
After putting everything back together again, I turn it on and plug it up to my PC and the SAME thing happens all over again with the crazy characters and trying to load drivers.

So, I know that the HDD is working fine because it works outside of the Lyra. The problem has to be something with the Lyra itself.

What would cause this to happen, and is there something I can do to fix it??

Like I said, the Lyra worked just fine. It read and played all my music and videos. The only problem it has is being recognized by my Win XP PC.

Any ideas??

 

[mpjesse]

Have u tried manually telling Windows XP to use the correct driver? From my experience the "automatically find driver" option doesn't work very well.

Oh.. and another suggestion: try using a different USB port if you haven't already done so. I know it sounds ridiculous, but i've had USB devices do similar things and moving it to another port fixed it.

 

[Unstop]

Yes, I have tried moving the Lyra to different USB ports.

No, I have not tried manually installing the drivers. How would I go about doing that? There isn't a driver disk, there is only the .exe that has the OS and software that I downloaded from the RCA site.

 

[mpjesse]

There's 2 ways:

You can go to RCA's site and attempt to find the drivers...

or

Open the .EXE file with WinRAR. It's possible the .EXE is nothing more than a self extracting archive and it may be possible to extract the individual driver files from it.

Let me know if that works.

 

[Unstop]

Nope on BOTH counts.
Nothing on RCA's site and The drivers can not be manually loaded by the WinRAR method. Neat thing, that. Never knew you could open an exe file and extract info out of it by using WinRAR.

Thanks for the tips though.
Any other ideas??

It just really bothers me as to why the name is showing up in all crazy characters like it is.

 

[utaka95]

bad USB cable?

 

[Unstop]

bad USB cable?

I thought that as well, but I have tried two other cables, and it does the same thing with them as well.

I am beginning to think that there is nothing that I can do. That there is just something wrong with the Lyra USB interface, because the HDD is in great shape.

 

[sstteevvee]

have you tried it on a different computer or removing whatever software your new mp3 player installed? maybe it's conflicting with the newer device you've been using while it's been lying around.

 

[Unstop]

Yup, Tried it on two PCs, both Win XP, and both are PCs it has worked on in the past. One of them has never had the newer iPod hooked up to it, so I know that there is no chance that the iPod software can interfere with its operation.

 

[blunc]

it's possible that the usb firmware in the Lyra has gotten corrupted, have you tried a google search to see if anyone else has this problem (and possible solution) with a Lyra?

 

[Unstop]

Yes, I have tried doing a search. I found alot of people with all knids of other problems, (now I know what to do to fix it if any of those things ever happen..lol), but nothing about my specific problem. It was for that reason that I desided to post on PC related forums for help. Since the problem seems to be either USB related or a Windows problem, I figured I may actually receive help here. There are no active Lyra forums anymore since this thing is about 4 years old.

 

[blunc]

Well, I'm sorry to say I don't have a solution for your current hardware. You might try finding a Lyra on ebay that has a dead hard drive and see if your hard drive will work in it.

 

[Unstop]

Yea. Kind of figured that out a couple of days ago. I already started looking around. Right now though the only ones on eBay are either working fine (meaning they want too much for it) or it has more problems than mine does. At least mine still works and plays audio/video just fine. It is a hassle to have to take the HDD out every time I want to add something to it, but with a 20 Gb HDD, I can load almost all of mine AND my daughter's music on it at one time. So it shouldn't be that big of a deal.

Thanks for the advice you have given me on this matter.

Peace

 

[Red_Frog]

I agree with Blunc, sounds like the Lyra's USB has given up the ghost.

I had very similar issues with a thumb drive that was killed by my PS2. Unfortunately I couldn't just remove it's memory like your HD.

 

[blunc]

there is a slim possibility that a fuse has failed on the usb circuit of the Lyra, you might be able to find it if you're handy with a digital meter and a magnifying glass (but it's a long shot). it really suck that a one dollar part makes expensive electronics useless.