USB problems

[Paddy]

Many USB problems are caused by cheap on=board chip sets on PCs and laptops.

[Dante]

Agree with above - teh first place to look is Disk Management - if you can see it as a lump of storage with no drive letter assigned - you're in business. If you can't then it's possibly a more fundamental driver/hardware issue.

Have a look in device manager as you plug it in to see if it tries to load a driver for it...

[blacjac]

One thing which may lead to this issue is if you don't use the "remove hardware" control in windows before disconnecting anything from the USB ports.

Personally I'm pretty lazy so I don't bother

Can anyone confirm that they get this issue whilst ALWAYS going through the correct procedure to remove hardware?

Not performing "remove hardware" can lead to loss of data when using USB storage devices.

However, I have had this problem when allways dong that, but it was on XP.

The problem I had was that I used several different USB sticks on the same PC (not at the same time), every one of them got assigned a different drive letter by XP. At one point, XP got confused and assigned 2 of them the same drive letter. From this point on one of them would not work until I used the drive manager to remove the dirve letter and let XP reassign them different ones again.

Right Click on "My Computer" -> Manage
Once in, Storage -> Disk management.


Don't know why I forgot this earlier.

[Spacecadet]

One thing which may lead to this issue is if you don't use the "remove hardware" control in windows before disconnecting anything from the USB ports.

Personally I'm pretty lazy so I don't bother

Can anyone confirm that they get this issue whilst ALWAYS going through the correct procedure to remove hardware?

[blacjac]

Solution Linux

OK, so what was the question?

[Goldenboy]

Have you looked at changing the drive letter in disk management?

[Netraider]

Solution Linux

What!! - Not Solution Mac

[Addanc]

Solution Linux

[PAH]

If it's a work laptop it may have security set up to not allow access to flash/usb drives.

Had it on my PC at work, but they gave us enough permissions to be able to switch it off.

[scooterscot]

Well I hav ean answer - but you're not going to like it

[Platypus]

I recall that Vista is particularly fussy when it comes to USB sticks - the solution (I understand) is to use a supported stick.

[daviejones]

This is a common prob I recall.....wish I could recall the fix though!

Wasn't it something to do with removeable media service???

[Spacecadet]

second that with windows persisting devices on a certain USB hub
Annoys the heck out me

[AtW]

Windows is the common reason for that - try another USB port that was not used before by mouse, the damn OS seems to remember last device there and half expects it to be the same when it is inserted again. I've got similiar problems on my PC but if I use another port it seems to work.

Another alternative is to try to use USB hub to which you will try to connect USB stick.

[Mustang]

Can anyone of you technical gurus recommend a website for workingout what is wrong with USB ports?

My wife's laptop has some USB problems. She cant seem to use a flashdrive on it. The USB port runs a mouse OK and when she plugs the flash drive in it recognises it is there but when she opens windows explorer it isn't visible!

Any suggestions or recommendations?!