Flash Drive Won't Show Up

A

Atrye

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 11, 2004
Messages
222
I've got a 128MB USB 1.1/2.0 flash stick.

When I plug it into my system running Windows XP Home Edition, the system finds it and assigns it a drive letter, but it won't show up under My Computer. It shows up as removable storage in the system tray, it shows up in device manager, and I can even browse to it from within programs to open files, but it will not show up in Windows Explorer at all.

Can anyone tell me how to fix this?
 
Isn't there a setting that you can change in the folders view, that doesn't show removable drives?? or I thought there was one somewhere...could be wrong.
 
You most likely have a drive letter conflict. How many drives to you have? Any mapped drives?

Right click on My Computer > Manage - then under Storage on the left pane > Disk Management

Find your USB drive in the list and make sure to set it to a drive letter that isn't in use.

Hope that helps.
 
mrmagoo_83 said:
Isn't there a setting that you can change in the folders view, that doesn't show removable drives?? or I thought there was one somewhere...could be wrong.
Click to expand...

I looked around and couldn't find anything...


aBSoLuT_0 said:
You most likely have a drive letter conflict. How many drives to you have? Any mapped drives?

Right click on My Computer > Manage - then under Storage on the left pane > Disk Management

Find your USB drive in the list and make sure to set it to a drive letter that isn't in use.

Hope that helps.
Click to expand...

This was my first thought... I've had that problem before on an older machine. However, all of my "drive letter hardware" is under My Computer and looking fine. As I mentioned before, Windows does appear to recognize the drive and assign it a letter (F: in this case). Heck, the thing even shows up under disk defragmenter. But for some reason not in Windows Explorer.

Nonetheless, I still followed your instructions only to run into another puzzling situation. When I click on Disk Management, it just sticks on "Connecting to Logical Disk Manager Service..." and never shows me my disks.

This is by no means an old installation of Windows, so it seems odd to think that Windows is just getting old and needs reinstalling already.
 
Try it in another computer. You'll probably find that it does the same thing and is a bad drive. I've seen many bad USB drives do very similar things.
 
Atrye said:
Nonetheless, I still followed your instructions only to run into another puzzling situation. When I click on Disk Management, it just sticks on "Connecting to Logical Disk Manager Service..." and never shows me my disks.

This is by no means an old installation of Windows, so it seems odd to think that Windows is just getting old and needs reinstalling already.
Click to expand...

Do you have Service Pack 2 installed? I'm pretty sure this could be related to SP2 and the Administrative service. I'm kind of short on time right now, so hopefully that is enough to get you started. Anyone mind helping out on this? ;)
 
S1nF1xx said:
Try it in another computer. You'll probably find that it does the same thing and is a bad drive. I've seen many bad USB drives do very similar things.
Click to expand...

The drive works fine on other machines. It is also not specific to this particular stick. The stick works fine on other systems.

aBSoLuT_0 said:
Do you have Service Pack 2 installed? I'm pretty sure this could be related to SP2 and the Administrative service. I'm kind of short on time right now, so hopefully that is enough to get you started. Anyone mind helping out on this? ;)
Click to expand...

SP2 is installed. Is there some service I need to mess with?
 
It is either the Administrative service or Cryptographic service... give those a look make sure they are running.
 
I went to Services under Administrative Tools and the Cryptographic service is running. However, I didn't see an Administrative service. Is this found in a different location?
 
I had this problem before. What fixed it for me was plugging in the drive, going to Device Manager, Disk Drives, and uninstalling the flash drive. Then unplug the flash drive, wait a few moments and plug it back in. It will be redetected, the drivers reinstalled, and in my case anyway it worked fine from that time on.
 
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