Laptop with Vista Home Premium doesn't recognize USB key

[flapeyre]

Hi all,

I have a Sony Vaio laptop with Vista Home Premium. I needed to put a VPN client on it, so I bought a thumb drive for it, a 4 GB Geek Squad u3 drive.

On our XP machines at work, no problem. But Vista does nothing (although if you are in Device Manager, or whatever they call it, once you insert the key, it shows up as an unknown device with a triangle-exclamation point icon.

I must add that Vista did recognize my cellphone correctly (a RAZR V3) when I plugged it in prior to installing the synchronization software, so I guess the hardware is OK, so why didn't it find the correct driver for the USB drive?

Neither Sony's website nor Geek Squad's is of any help.

Solum potestis prohibere ignes silvarum.

 

[PRPhx]

I don't think it's just a Vista problem. I am having the same problem with a Compaq desktop pc running XP Home SP2. My web cam will not work for anything, altho my USB printer and thumb drive both work.

 

[flapeyre]

The drive works on three separate XP machines (so far).

Solum potestis prohibere ignes silvarum.

 

[Khosher]

Check what file system the usb drive is formatted to. It needs to be NTFS I think ! ! !

Don't think Vista supports FAT or FAT32.

That might be your problem

 

[flapeyre]

Actually, the drive is now working. I guess Vista just needed a second chance.

Thanks.

Solum potestis prohibere ignes silvarum.

 

[smah]

The U3 software won't work under Vista, but the storage space should work.

 

[flapeyre]

smah:

I did a little digging on the U3 site at work today and found that the U3 software is supposed to work under Vista if it's version 1.4 or above.

I think the drive I bought had a downlevel version (must have been on the shelf for a while), so, using my XP Pro machine at work, I upgraded the software to the latest version. That must have done it, because now it's working.

Solum potestis prohibere ignes silvarum.