Perhaps there is a program currently accessing the drive? Use the task manager to see if there are any processes you can kill that may be hung and using, or refering to, that drive.

Usually Windows will recognize if the drive is not installed. So, if you have not tried this already, you may want to pull the drive (and get the error message), and reboot. See if the OS then detects it is gone. Install the drive after this and the OS may properly recognize the drive.

If that does not work, contact the tech support of the company manufactruing the drive. If they are unwilling to resolve the situation, post back and I will help with some research.

nope, nothing seems to be hung up..I even deleted the 2 USB ports and had w2k refind and load them. still hasnt fixed the problem

Looking further into the issue I have found a lot of people have the same problem within Windows. It looks like it is a problem with the hardware device itself (not that the device is 'broken' nessecarily, but rather that it may not be up to par with regards to other hardware manufacturers ability to have USB capability) or the motherboard/USB driver.

Specifically, I have seen this problem _a lot_ with IPODS. My suggestion is to contact the manufacturer, and if you have not updated the driver as of recent (both your motherboard USB driver and the hardware driver if available) then do so. Let me know what response the manufacturer gives you and I should be able to help from there. Hopefully they will have a resolution.