NS_E_DEVICE_IS_NOT_READY (0XC00D1177) – Fix Windows Media Player Disk Error
Windows Media Player can't see your external drive or SD card. Usually a driver or connection glitch. Three fixes: quick replug, driver refresh, or registry tweak.
What's Actually Happening Here
Windows Media Player throws 0XC00D1177 when it tries to read a drive that's not ready. The drive might be asleep, disconnected, or the driver's misbehaved. This is common with external USB hard drives, SD cards in readers, or old iPods synced via WMP. The error text says "Device is not ready" – WMP can't see any media files on it.
Don't restart your PC yet. Try these in order. Stop when it works.
Fix 1 – The 30-Second Replug Trick
Most of the time the drive just lost its handshake with Windows. Unplug the USB cable or SD card. Wait 10 seconds. Plug it back into a different USB port (not the same one).
- Right-click the drive in File Explorer and select Eject (if it shows). Then unplug.
- Wait 10 full seconds. This lets the USB controller reset.
- Plug into a port on the back of your PC (not a hub or front panel).
- Open Windows Media Player again. Click the device name under Other Libraries.
Why this works: USB ports share power and data lines. A flaky port can leave the drive in a half-on state. Switching ports forces Windows to re-enumerate the device, re-reading its drivers and media content.
Fix 2 – Moderate: Refresh the Driver (5 Minutes)
If replugging didn't help, the driver might be stuck. Open Device Manager (press Win+X, select it). Expand Disk drives or Universal Serial Bus controllers.
- Look for your drive – usually named something like USB Mass Storage Device or the drive brand (WD, SanDisk, etc.). You'll see a yellow triangle if it's unhappy.
- Right-click the device and choose Uninstall device. Don't check "Delete the driver software".
- Unplug the drive, restart your PC, then plug it back in. Windows re-installs the driver on its own.
If that still fails, right-click again, choose Update driver → Browse my computer for drivers → Let me pick from a list. Select Standard Mass Storage Controller (or USB Mass Storage Device). Click Next and ignore the warning. This bypasses buggy vendor drivers that sometimes hang.
I've seen this fix work on Windows 10 22H2 and Windows 11 23H2 with a Seagate 2TB external drive that kept showing the error. The generic Microsoft driver is stable. Vendor drivers like WD SES or LaCie's can cause the device to report as "not ready" after sleep.
Fix 3 – Advanced: Registry Edit (15+ Minutes)
Sometimes the USB device's power management setting forces it to sleep. Windows Media Player then sees it as "not ready". The registry fix disables selective suspend for USB devices.
Back up your registry first. Press Win+R, type regedit, click File → Export. Save a backup.
- Navigate to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\USB - Look for a DWORD named DisableSelectiveSuspend. If it doesn't exist, right-click in the right pane → New → DWORD (32-bit) and name it DisableSelectiveSuspend.
- Set its value to 1. That turns off USB selective suspend globally.
- Close regedit and restart your PC.
After the restart, plug the drive in and open WMP. The error should be gone.
What this does: Selective suspend lets USB devices go into a low-power state when idle. Some drives don't wake up properly when WMP queries them. Disabling it keeps the drive awake. Downside: slightly higher power draw (maybe 0.5W) – not an issue on desktops, trivially shorter battery life on laptops.
If None of These Work
Check if the drive shows in File Explorer with a drive letter. If it doesn't, open Disk Management (right-click Start → Disk Management). If the drive appears as "Not Initialized" or "Unallocated", that's a different problem – the disk is dead or needs partitioning. If it shows with a letter but WMP still errors, the drive might be formatted with exFAT or EXT4. Windows Media Player only reads NTFS and FAT32. Reformat to NTFS if you don't need cross-platform compatibility.
For SD cards: some card readers have a physical lock switch. Make sure it's not set to "Lock".
Real-world scenario: A common trigger is plugging an external drive via a USB 3.0 hub. The hub's controller goes to sleep after 30 seconds of no activity. When WMP tries to scan it, the hub hasn't woken up yet. Fix 1 (replug directly to the PC) usually solves it. Fix 3 (registry) is for laptops that always suspend USB ports.
That's it. Three steps, no wasted time. Start with the replug, move to the driver, and only touch the registry if you must.
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