Garmin express stopped synching with odd error message in windows 10 but has been working fine up until today

Format the disk?

what disk, there isn't one. That is the issue the device in 'E'  is the watch itself attached by that USB port/ charge clip it came with?

Ah ok, then that's probably not a good idea

Unless someone else can help you may be best calling Product Support 

I was hoping this was something people have had experience of resolving. that's why I posted here. 

These are just generic USB device troubleshooting ideas:

Have you tried a restart of Windows 10?

Try another cable if you have one?

Tried any of the other USB ports on the laptop? I have seen it many times where Windows 10 will reject a device on one USB port but accept it on another.

Try connecting it to another computer, if you have access to one, to see if you get an error message there too. (For this test Garmin Express does not need to be installed on the other computer.)

Check the contacts on the watch and the USB cable are really clean, It doesn't take much contamination on the contacts, especially if pogo pins are involved, to cause problems.

Thanks for the suggestions. I have re started my lap top, if you mean something else by 'restarting windows 10' can you confirm what this means and if this would impact on anything else?

The cable is specific to the watch with a clip/sensors on the end to fit to the product so I cant swap it would with a generic USB cable to test.

I have checked the cables are clean. My watch is now also saying there is no space to add runs on despite the activity history being wiped from the watch so that is an additional issue.

I feel like windows was treating the Garmin like a storage device (it wasn't for the first two months of use however) but don't now how to change its catagorisation of the device if that makes sense!