Flash Drive Recognition
August 5th, 2016
Thanks.
Do the devices show up in the device manager?
If they show up there and not in My Computer, then it either didn’t get mounted because they got corrupted or they are mounted and windows explorer just had a brain fart. Left-click on the “Safely remove Hardware” icon in the system tray. If you see an entry that says “Safely remove USB Mass Storage Device – Drive(D:)” or something similar, the device is mounted correctly. Then browse to that drive using another program besides windows explorer, such as the command prompt. You should be able to access the files from there. My computer does this from time to time. I just use ACDSee to access the drive when this happens. Sometimes removing and re-inserting the drive will get it to show up. Other times, it just doesn’t want to show up in “My Computer”.
Do the drives receive power?
The USB memory stick should have a light on it that turns on when you plug it in.
Is the USB port working?
Try plugging in a known good device (such as your wireless adapter) and see if it works, then plug in one of the USB drives into the same port. That should give you an idea if the USB port itself is working. If the port is bad, it could be a loose connection or a bad cable. The cable I am talking about goes from the port on your case to a USB header on your motherboard.
Do the USB drives work on another computer?
If they do, then your computer is causing the problem.
If all the USB ports work with the wireless adapter and the USB drives work on another computer, it could be that the USB Mass Storage driver got corrupted.
You can also try rebooting you computer and see if things start working then. A reboot usually fixes many strange Windows problems.
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Do the USB drives work on another computer?
If they do, then your computer is causing the problem.
i agree with this. firstly make sure they work in another computer. If they don’t then you have not wasted your time trying lots of things on your own pc. if you find out they do work, my best advice would be a reinstall of drivers, (for the usb ports and the devices)
The memory stick is definately mounted, as I have the choice to safely remove the mass storage. How do I get it to show up in my computer?
The memory stick is definately mounted, as I have the choice to safely remove the mass storage. How do I get it to show up in my computer?
Can you access the drive from another program?
If you can, then just do that for now. There is probably a bug in Windows that causes this problem. As I said earlier, my computer sometimes does this too. A reboot might fix it, as well as ejecting the drive and re-inserting it.
What other programs out there let you access the drive?
Almost any program will let you browse the drive’s contents if you just select “file -> open” from the menu.
The strange thing is that the affected drive (at least on my computer) will show up in the open dialog of programs, but it won’t show up in Windows explorer when it happens, even though the open dialog looks like a mini version of explorer.
To get full file browsing capabilities, I like to use ACDSee. It is mainly an image viewing program, but it can work with all file types. There are many more “explorer replacement” programs out there you can try if you like as well.
check if the usb slot are disabled!
check if the usb slot are disabled!
How?
check if the usb slot are disabled!
How?
I already told you how in a previous post:
Is the USB port working?
Try plugging in a known good device (such as your wireless adapter) and see if it works, then plug in one of the USB drives into the same port. That should give you an idea if the USB port itself is working. If the port is bad, it could be a loose connection or a bad cable. The cable I am talking about goes from the port on your case to a USB header on your motherboard.
And I thought you figured out that the port wasn’t the problem:
The memory stick is definately mounted, as I have the choice to safely remove the mass storage. How do I get it to show up in my computer?
Oh I thought there was a different method to check if the USB port was working, but it obviously is. I installed xPlorer2, but for some reason it still doesn’t show up. I checked if my memory stick worked on another computer and it did fine. It still gives me the option to safely remove the mass storage device though. :s
I guess you can look and see if the device shows up in the device manager or use diagnostic software such as USB View.
USB View is here, if you are interested:
http://~ Dead file host ~/files/238207748/usbview.exe
Is there a drive letter after the mass storage device description?
See below:
