USB Pen Drive not working

T

tlohan

Registered User
Messages
13
Hi,

I bought a Toshiba 1Gb USB2.0 Pen Drive at the start of January and have been using it successfully for the last few weeks. Each time I've finished with it I do the safely remove hardware steps and unplug the pen drive.

Yesterday I plugged in my Pen Drive into my laptop, running Windows XP, but it did not appear. I waited for a few minutes and there was still no sign of it so I unplugged it. My girlfriend has the same make of USB Pen Drive and I tried hers in my laptop and it works fine.

I brought my Pen Drive and my girlfriends to work today and tried them both in my PC here, Windows XP, and again hers works perfectly and mine fails to show up.

Can anyone tell me if there is a way to get this working again or should I just take it back to the company I bought it off.

Thanks,

Tom
 
Have you tried it in all USB ports on the laptop? And maybe on some other PCs? USB Snoopy might help see what, if anything, is happening in terms of the USB device being recognised by the computer.
 
Clubman,

I've tried all the USB ports (3) on my PC at work and it works in none of them. My girlfriends Pen Drive works fine in them all.

Unfortunately I do not have admin privileges on my PC at work so cannot download the software until I get home this evening.

Cheers,

Tom
 
Some USB flash pen drives have very flimsy USB connectors - any chance that there's a problem there such that the connector is not making contact properly with the circuit board holding the actual flash memory chips? I know several people who had such drives which they carried around in their pockets and they eventually got damaged (e.g. by banging against keys or being sat on etc!). If the drive is not registering at all when connected to the USB port then the first thing that I would try to rule out is a electro-mechanical problem with the contact and the connection to the board. Another thing to check is to open the Device Manager (e.g. Start, right click on My Computer and choose Manage -> Device Manager) and check if when you insert the drive anything new appears under Storage Volumes or USB controllers.
 
Tried the Device Manager with both and again my Pen Drive did not yeild any info whereas my girlfriends showed up under both Storage Volumes and USB Controllers.

The connector is a bit loose on my one but as far as I can remember it has always been.

If it is a connection problem what can I do?
 
tlohan said:
If it is a connection problem what can I do?
Click to expand...
Other than opening the pen drive's casing up and checking for loose/broken connections and trying to resolder any that you might spot, not much I don't think.
 
Oh, ok.

Will get on to the supplier and see if they will do anything for me.

Thanks for the help, much appreciated.
 
Sometimes the USB settings on the PC get 'confused'.

I have found that with win XP if you go to the windows registry and delete the specific usb entries for your device, windows miraculuously recognises it

Run regedit and navigate to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\USB

Find your specific USB device and delete the entry

Close the registry and connect your USB

Be careful when doing any work on the registry!
 
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