First of all it would be nice to know wherher it is the flash drive itself, your computer hardware or the software that is acting up. What did you do before this happened?

Take your flash drive to another computer and see if it works there. If you don't have another machine around, try rebooting your computer. Plug the lash drive in a different USB port - if you tried the one in the front then go and plug it in the back now. Look in Windows Device Manager and see what it says about your USB devices.

Thank for your reply. I did tried it on 3 computers and different usb ports. Does this mean my flash drive is busted and have no way of recovering my files?

If it is not even recognised then yes, afraid so. Nothing a simple mortal can do.

In theory it can be done of course and there are companies that make a lot of money out of it. All one has to do is take out the flash chip and put it in some other reading device.

This may be useless infomation. But I had the same problem with a Cruzer Mini Sandisk at work. I found that by diconnecting a network drive or simply rebooting the PC with the flashdrive connected. It would then recognize it.