EASY fix for import/export drives not showing up!

Question

I had that problem that I've heard about around here, where when you go to import or export, you can't select any of your drives, etc. you only get 'Desktop' and your user folder.
I went through EVERYTHING from my registry to, well, everything.
I read a post here that talked about moving your desktop directory; that is a pain and is dangerous for people who don't know what they're doing. Here's a much easier way!
First you need to find your preferences file. I'm running Windows7  32-bit, and mine was here:
C:\Users\Dave\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Lightroom\Preferences
Paths for other versions of windows can be found here:
http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/405/kb405365.html
Once you get there, make sure to close lightroom first. Then you want to open "Lightroom 2 Preferences.agprefs"
Find a section that says something like this:
    AgMRUPopupList_AgExport_destinationFolderPathPrefix = "s = {\
    \"C:\\\\Users\\\\Dave\\\\Pictures\",\
this is a list of where Lightroom will try to export pictures. For some reason having only that one line messes it up. so we add another like so:
    AgMRUPopupList_AgExport_destinationFolderPathPrefix = "s = {\
    \"C:\\\\Users\\\\Dave\\\\Pictures\",\
    \"F:\\\\part 1\",\
Note that the new directory has to be a real one or this won't work. It doesn't matter what it is though. Also note all the slashes, I don't know why they have to be there but they do.
Now when you go into lightroom, and you're at the export dialog, when it says where to export to, click the little arrow to drop a list down. choose your new directory, then you can use the choose correctly, all your drives will be there and everything, and it is almost fixed permanently (see below)!
The same thing goes for the import dialog issue,
AgMRUPopupList_AgImportDialog_destinationFolderPath = "s = {\
    \"C:\\\\Users\\\\Dave\\\\Pictures\",\
Add a line so its like this:
AgMRUPopupList_AgImportDialog_destinationFolderPath = "s = {\
     \"C:\\\\Users\\\\Dave\\\\Pictures\",\
   \"F:\\\\part 1\",\
Save it. Now go to import, copy to a directory, then use that drop-down to select f:\part 1 (or whatever you used), and the choose folder is almost permanently fixed!
It turns out this issue arises when, say, all of the previous paths Lightroom imported from/exported to no longer exist. This actually happened to me for stupid reasons (!), but it might just be you left a USB drive off or whatever...So it clears the list and effs it up. It's a bug in lightroom and I hope they fix it, but this fixes it for now (unless you cause it again...)
Yay! I spent about 3 hours on this. Thanks to the other posters who helped pieces of the puzzle!

Answer 1

I'm guessing the ext. drive may have been damaged during the forced shutdown, and a repair is needed. You could also try mounting it in Disk Utility. A PRAM reset may also help.
But you also should try to resolve the Kernel Panic.
Here's the most used site for Resolving Kernel Panics. Please do all the steps in order, even if you don't think you need to do a certain step.
 Luck! DALE