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I have an audio recorder that can be read as an external hard drive via firewire. Thing is, it only works the first time I plug it in. Every time after that, windows won't recognize it. Having just reformatted when this issue occurred, I saw no harm in doing another reformat to double check. It proved to be correct. After another reformat, the device worked perfectly the first time it was connected and not properly at all after that.

So is there any way that I can completely erase my computers "memory" of having been connected to this specific device without reformatting? Basically, I want to be able to connect this device as if it's the first time I have done so (with windows having to install drivers etc).


note : I did try erasing every mention of it in the registry, but I'm not allowed to delete them (or even change their permissions at all).

Is your cable maybe too long? I know USB devices will run unstable, maybe that applies for firewire.

For some reason your approach sounds undesireable to me... I'd rather find a fix then a workaround .

You could maybe manually uninstall then reinstall the driver of the device (device manager). There should be a checkbox when uninstalling which asks if you want to remove the driver permanently. If soft uninstall does not work try ticking that option then plug that device back out and in.

Control Panel_>Device Manager
IT will be listed under Disk Drives.

You need to fix this issue because more likely than not each time you plug it in it is creating another phantom device registry, which after some time will slow down windows and cause other OS problems. Or not, but it happens often.

There is a GUI program that will remove the FireWire Device through a registry edit once you find the Device_ID, but I haven't used it since I upgrade from XP to Vista years ago.

for now try this one:
USB Safely Remove - Free software downloads and software reviews - CNET Download.com

The official way to write your own script to fix the problem:
How to remove registry information about devices that will never be used again on a computer that is running Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2

You should go to the firewire audio device's manufacturer's website and find updated drivers. That is also a possible cause of th problem,

Alternatively, Windows is seeing your firewire device as a dynamic disk, but you haven't assigned it a Driver Letter yet, check Disk Manager for that.

Hope that gives you a start.

Update.

This was likely due to the hardware having a corrupt hard drive. I've sent it back for repair.

(same company are loaning me another one for 2 weeks while I wait, good opportunity to test it out and make sure that was the problem ).