[SOLVED] Toshiba external hard drive suddenly stopped showing on laptop

[cazt]

It's worked fine since I got this HP laptop 16 months ago and now, with no warning or changes by me to the system it is not recognised by the laptop on either port though it works still on the desktop. The Toshiba power light comes on blue on the laptop but white on the desktop which I haven't noticed before. The two USB ports on the laptop work fine for other devices. I have used the Windows 10 troubleshooter to no avail - it can't see it and gave the message 'Windows could not fix the problem - contact your administrator (which is me). I did find the driver in Devices and Managers and uninstalled it as per recommendations but it did not reinstall when I restarted the computer and there is now no recognition of the Toshiba's presence anywhere on the laptop. I've tried HP's support but nothing there helped. Coincidentally I have also found that my wireless connection to both our printers has stopped working yet, like the Toshiba HD, they do work on the desktop. No idea if the two problems are connected but both are driving me nuts. Could this be a Windows 10 update issue? Any advice very gratefully received.

 

[fzabkar]

Could it be that your desktop has USB 2.0 ports and the laptop has USB 3.x? If so, then this might point to a break at the USB 3 pins at the drive's connector. USB 2.0 uses different pins, in which case a USB 2.0 cable might be a workaround.

Have you turned airplane mode on for your laptop? That could explain the loss of Wi-Fi (and Bluetooth ?) connectivity.

 

[cazt]

Thanks for your really helpful reply. The wireless printing problem has been resolved, just half an hour ago, thankfully, when I discovered that the homegroup had somehow disconnected on the desktop so, having reinstated that, printing from the laptop now works - yay! (though I still can't get the laptop to reciprocate file-sharing with the other computer, despite all file sharing options being selected but that's another story). Re the Toshiba external drive, yes, I think now that the desktop has USB 2.0 ports and the laptop 3.0 so your suggestion sounds good but would a USB 2.0 cable work OK in the laptop? Or should i just buy a new identical cable altogether?