Aria 250Gb Media Centre Compact Help!!!!!

[Alienprey]

Hi hoping for some help.
I've just received my 250Gb Media Centre Compact Today;
Plugged the power in.
Plugged it into the USB.
Turned it on (Blue light comes on)
No sounds of any hard drive activity
Windows XP beeps indicating something has been plugged in.
A few seconds later it beeps again.
Searched the forum and followed the instructions;
Right click on MyComputer, Manage, Disk Management
Drive does not show up at all.
Disconnect, plug it back in. Doesn't show.
Plug in another USB storage drive and it appears straight away.

As I can't get it to even show up under Disk Management I bamboozled!!

Any ideas of what I am doing wrong, or is it faulty?

Don't want to RMA it until I know it's the unit and not me.

Cheers

Ian

[Anonymous]

[Removed at the request of the author]

[Alienprey]

Thanks,
just tried another USB lead, but to no avail.
Windows balloon came up and said there was a problem with installing the hardware and that it might be faulty.
Also tried installation on another machine and same lack of response.

I get no HDD access noises. I would have thought it normal to hear something but having no experience of this unit I don't know?

[Anonymous]

[Removed at the request of the author]

[Alienprey]

Yes I think the drive is DOA as well.
I've connected it to the TV and get a display.
Have also plugged in a compact flash and can navigate around.
Hard drive just won't show up under XP.
Shame I was looking foward to playing!!!

[Doctor 8Ball]

It is possible that there is not enough USB power.

Eliminate this by removing all USB devices and then having only the hard drive in each USB port to test all reaction by XP.

Assuming you are running XP SP2 or near variant AND you have USB 2.0 support drivers:
open up device manager:

Start > Run > devmgmt.msc

Navigate to 'USB Serial Bus Controllers' and expand.
Make sure you have 'USB Enhanced Host Controller' or similar wording involving \"enhanced\".
Click/Open up a \"USB Root Hub\" and click the tab \"Power Management\".

Make sure for each Root Hub you have that \"Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power\" is not ticked.

Now try all the USB ports in turn.

Some simple analysis before you declare DOA :arrow:

[Alienprey]

Thanks for the info.
Have already RMA'd so can't check this out but;
I did try installation and initialisation on two separate PC's, one of which had no other USB devices connected.
I can plug in an external USB powered drive and it works without issue.
Also the Media Centre Compact is powered from it's own supply so it should draw minimum current from the port.

I just hope it get's sorted quickly. It is annoying when you've paid for something but don't have the goods.
Not having purchased from Aria before I've no experience of their after sales service.

One suggestion I would make is that they add another £5 to the cost and set up the disk for you. That way they would know if the unit worked before it was shipped. Others may disagree but I think it would be worth it.