USB drive doesn't work.

[jim532]

I have a Sandisk micro crizer 512mb. I also have 2 identical Dell Dimension E310 with Xp Pro and all latest updates. I plug the drive into 1 macchine and it works just as it's supposed to. When I plug it in to the other PC windows recognizes it, installs the drivers and tells me it's ready to use. I can see it in the device manager but there it does not appear in MyComputer with a n assigned drive letter. So I have no way of accessing it. I have tried a couple registry mods+reboot as suggested at Sandisk website but that does not work. Also I tried my Lexar 1Gb USB drive in this PC and it works just fine.
Anyone got any suggestions?

 

[civilwar123456]

I'm guessing you have already done this but have you tried pluggin the flash drive into a different usb port (on the same pc it doesn't work)?

 

[Foada]

Have you tired to change the drive letter for the USB drive from Disk Manager on the machine that does not see the drive?

If you choose to battle wits with the witless be prepared to lose.

 

[cdogg]

First of all, always make sure you are "stopping" the USB device before you pull it out of the USB slot, by using the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon in your system tray. Not doing so can cause you to have to reboot the PC before it will properly detect the USB device again. Even worse, it can eventually corrupt the data storage on the device.

Since we know it's not the device that's the problem in this situation, I would try the following:

1) Power off the PC
2) Remove the USB device
3) Power the PC back on
4) As civilwar mentioned above, insert the drive into the other USB port (if you have more than two, you may need to repeat this several times)

Trust me, Windows is picky about you moving the port sometimes. Perhaps you had the device in a different port the first time you used it on this PC.

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884

 

[dglienna]

Have you hit F5 to refresh the MyComputer screen?
Some OS's require it. Even in W2K3, I've noticed that copied folders don't show up always.

-David
2006 Microsoft Most Valueable Professional (MVP)
2006 Dell Certified System Professional (CSP)

 

[Primis]

jim532 -

Right-click on your My Computer and go to Manage and see if the USB drive shows up under Storage... Disk Management. If so, right-click on it (meaning the USB Drive... MAKE SURE IT'S THE USB DRIVE YOU HAVE SELECTED AND NOT AN ACTUAL HARD DRIVE OR OTHER PHYSICAL DISK DRIVE) and select Change Drive Letter and Paths and manually give it a name like Z: or something.

From there then, also make sure you don't have DaemonTools running (or something similar) on the problem machine. It could be it's trying to map it to a drive letter that a fake DVD drive is already using up (Windows tries to work it's way from C: on up to D:, E:, F:, etc, when it automatically assigns drive names)...

Utils like DaemonTools are great if you're never plugging and unplugging media to the box, but because they're spoofed and not actual physical drives Windows will sometimes try to assign a drive letter twice. It gets even more picky and worse if you have mapped network drives added into the mix.

Hope this helps.

 

[cdogg]

Good point Primis. Forgot about that checking Dism Management. That has definitely worked for me in the past as well.

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884