Problem with USB Ports not recognising thumb drives

[lenny007]

Morning All

Bit of an issue on my desktop here and i thought i'd ask the collective brains to see if anyone had any suggestions as to how to remedy the problem.

It's pretty self explanatory - whenever i try to use a USB thumb drive on my pc, it's not showing in the My Computer window and won't open up.

I can see the drive and also access the contents by right clicking the My Computer icon, "Manage" and then double clicking "Disk Management". However i can't save to the drives but have to save on the Desktop and then drag and dropping it into the USB drive.

The PC recognises my printers and wireless adaptor so they work fine but just not the drives.

I've tried :

- uninstalling and re-installing the usb drives in the device manager
- updating the drivers for the chipset

all to no avail. I installed a software package for a Brother all in one which seems to have caused the problem. I've subsequently uninstalled all of the relevant software that was installed and also done a System Restore to a date prior to the USB's going faulty and again, this has not worked.

FYI, i'm running XP Pro Service Pack 3.

I've trawled the net for advice on this but none of it has worked. If anyone has any ideas or repairs, i'd be extremely grateful.

Cheers in advance

[spitfire-ian]

If you can see it in disk management see if it's trying to use the same drive letter as another device and change it if necessary. Normally they insist on 'E' until you convince them that something else is already using that letter

[thetapeworm]

Have the USB devices been allocated a drive letter?

Right-click on My Computer and choose ‘Manage’ (or Start > Run > compmgmt.msc)

Look to see if the drive is in the bottom section and if it has a drive letter assigned.

If it doesn't right-click and select the option to allocate a drive letter.

[lenny007]

Right then, with both the My Computer and Computer Management windows open, whenever i put the thumb drive into one of the 3 front mounting USB ports, it's assigning the drive as K: drive.

However, the K: drive is not showing in the My Computer window, but drives F; to J: are.

I've tried to re-assign a drive letter to it but it will only allow me to start at drive L:

[thetapeworm]

Call it T: and see what it makes of that.

[lenny007]

Partial success!

I've managed to resolve the problem on one of the thumb drives but not the other by changing the drive name.

The other drive refuses to show in either My Computer or Computer Management yet once it's put into another PC, will open up no problem.

I did reformat the drive to see if that was the issue - is there any way this could be causing an issue?

[br d]

lenny007 said:

Partial success!

I've managed to resolve the problem on one of the thumb drives but not the other by changing the drive name.

The other drive refuses to show in either My Computer or Computer Management yet once it's put into another PC, will open up no problem.

I did reformat the drive to see if that was the issue - is there any way this could be causing an issue?

This could be a power issue. Open device manager and try disabling as many USB ports as possible, unplug printers/modems and the like as well leaving only the essential stuff connected (mouse/keyboard). Sometimes the device is trying to draw more power than is available from the port.

Might be something totally different but I have had success doing this with USB memory sticks that weren't recognised.

[lenny007]

Sorted!

I realised that the drive had been formatted to FAT 32 whereas the working one was FAT. Reformated the "bad" drive, copied the data back onto it and the Computer Management picked it up.

Changed the drive letter and we're good to go.

Thanks to everyone who helped me - jobs a good un.