XP Pro SP1 won't assign a drive letter to usb 2.0 flash drive

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waterskin

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It has no problem if I used a usb1.1 flash drive. However, when I tried a usb2.0 flash drive, there is no drive letter appearing in Windows Explorer.

I am running XP Pro with SP1. My colleague has a PC with the same hardware configuration and I had no problem plugging the usb2.0 flash drive in his machine.

Device manager did show the usb2.0 flash drive when I plugged it in the usb port.

Any idea?
 
For grins can you try changing the drive letter in device manager while it's plugged into a USB 2.0 port?
 
It sounds like it is trying to share a drive letter with something else, like a virtual drive. I had this problem with my virtual drive I had setup to permanenely be G, well when I plug in my USB it should be G and it doesn't show up because that virtual drive was already taken up as a software drive, but not hardware. Check your virtual settings.

BTW
:wave:Welcome to TechSpot:wave:
 
what has worked

Provided you have a USB 2 driver installed the issue we have seen is that the OS trys to assign the d: to both CDROM and Flash drive.

Try right clicking the My Computer icon and select manage. Go down hte list to disk management and select your CD and right click, change drive letter to k or higher. This is a troubleshooting step. Restart your system and see if the flash drive appears. Depending on the number of drives you might want to try this with others, only do not change C.

Also we have had problems with Dell laptops and external devices, check you vendor support.

Good luck
 
You could also try and remove the USB Root Hub or USB Controllers in the device manager, and then rebooting. Windows should detect them again on restart. Its possible something got corrupted.
 
Sng.. reminded me, Real.... gave me some excellent help a while ago .
Check out this thread. Especially the site he recommended for USB troubleshooter.
Worked great
 
Sorry I should have given more information to my problem.

I had no problem using a USB1.1 flash drive plugging into the usb port of my PC. It came up with the drive letter G. BTW, my CD-ROW is drive F.

However, after I bought this new USB2.0 flash drive, it didn't come up with the drive letter. My colleague's PC has the same configuration as mine, and I don't have problem using the USB2.0 flash drive in his PC.
 
You haven't stated what you did to load the drivers,software for the drive or if you have tried any of the troubleshooting tips mentioned to you.
USB 2 is backward compatible to 1 , but it will run slower .
Let us know how things work out.
 
Thank you all for your idea and tips. Much appreciated.

I finally got it working now. Poertner 1274 was right. Why didn't I get it was because I thought the usb drive will use the drive letter g? Before I bought this usb2.0 flash drive, I had a usb1.1 flash drive and it always got assigned the drive letter g. For this new usb2.0 drive, it got assigned the drive letter h. I had a network drive mapped to h and it could be the reason why I didn't see the drive letter for my usb2.0 flash drive. Now I un-mapped the network drive and I could see my usb2.0 flash drive in Windows Explorer.

This forum is great.

Thanks.
 
Which is exactly why I initially said to try changing the drive letter.
 
Hey thanks guys

I had not previously been a member of your forum (I visit PCQandA) but I typed into a search engine "computer won't see SanDisk" and it lead me to your forum where I found the solution to my problem by re-mapping a network drive to a higher letter allowing the flash drive to use F.

Just wanted to say Thanks!

[FONT=Tahoma]Candee[/FONT]
 
I think that you may have to install SP2 as SP1 does not support USB2.0, i have noticed whilst building new systems that there is an error with usb2.0 untill u install SP2 and then reinstall drivers to enable USB2.0 support
 
When it was not working, I did try updating my XP SP1 to SP2. However, it was causing problem in Windows explorer and Internet explorer after I loaded SP2. The problem was it took long long time to open up My Computer and took long time to open new window link in IE. I was fed up so I removed SP2 from my PC.

Now my PC is running SP1 and I have no problem using the USB 2.0 on my PC.
 
cant get jumpdrive secure 2.0 to be recognized or create drive letter

I am trying to follow your threads to see if i have a similar problem.

I have a jumpdrive secure v2.0.

I hooked it into a win2k machine and download files to it.

Then i moved it over to a win xp pro sp1a machine. I tried to plug it in but no drive letter or recognition of its existance seems to happen.

I did move my cd to drive letter l and m. One hard drive is c and the othe is f.

Any other suggestions.
 
When I was not able to see the jumpdrive in Windows Explorer, I went into Disk Management (Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Computer Management) and I was able to see the Jumpdrive in drive H. That's how I noticed that it was using the drive letter of one of my mapped drives.

Good luck.

p.s. Also check Device Manager to see whether you have Standard Enhanced PCI to USB Host Controller under Universal Serial Bus controllers or not?
 
i tried both those things and i dont see the drive

I have went back over the motherboard now and confirmed that i have my front panel wired to the usb 2.0 plug.

I was told by lexar that i have to have some usbstor directory in my registry otherwise the driver wont exist.

I dont know the drive light doesnt even turn on the jump drive 2.0 so i kind am wondering if the guy isnt right.

I have tried everything including trying to download that version 3.0 beta.

It says it doesnt see a card any where.

Tyler
 
It sounds like the front USB port isn't connected. Maybe you have the plug in the board backwards, or that connector is disabled in cmos. Did you try connecting your jump drive to a rear USB connector?
 
tried that

i checked all the connections and tried all ports thinking maybe only some of them would be even 2.0 compliant and some 1.1.

The front port i wired directly into the 2.0 port on the main board.

The cmos i enabled all 8 usb ports(4 in rear and 4 in front, then tried 6)

Neither worked.

Any time i plug the cartridge in it is as if its dead or something.

I am going to try and retry the jumpdrive next week on my work machine.

If it still works there i am at a loss to understand what to do now.

My work machine of course is win2k not win xp pro.

Tyler
 
Use Disk Manager to assign a drive letter.

I have encountered this several times. It usually happened to me on systems with lots of network drive letters already assigned. The computer is looking to assign the next drive letter it would normally choose, but that letter is taken and for whatever reason it stops looking. Logically it should just go through to your lastdrive letter which is usually Z:, but it doesn't. Often, you have to manually assign it an unused drive letter. Right-click on 'My Computer' and select 'Manage'. Then under the 'storage' section, click on 'Disk Management'. It will list all of your local hard drives and CD/DVD Rom drives (it looks a lot like 'Partition Magic'). From there, you can manually assign that device to a drive letter you know to be unused. Then it will show up under 'My Computer'.
 
I just want to play devil's advocate for a moment here. I see lots of replies blaming this on usb2.0 suppor, or lack there of. I have several of these usb key(jump drive, pen drive, whatever you want to call them) all of them are USB 2.0, several different sizes and manufacturers, and use them on several machines, some with USB 2.0, some with 1.1. I have yet to need to install any driver or software to get a drive letter or to use the drives(sans the "secure" feature of a couple of them) The only difference I've seen is that the drives are of course slower when using them in 1.1 ports.
I've used these drives on front ports, rear ports, self powered hubs, bus powered hubs, laptops, desktops, Win2k(sp4), XP Home and XP Pro (no sp, sp1 and sp2), systems I've built, and branded systems.
 
Jumpdrive Missing Resolved!!

Hey, I followed the advice that I found about renaming cd drive letter except here at work it was our network drive (f) that was being taken by the jumpdrive. I remapped the network drive to (g) and then the jumpdrive was able to appear as (f)

:bounce:
 
hi, i'm having a problem with my lexar jumpdrive secure. it is not appearing in 'my computer'. ii can see it in computer management > disk management. but it says it is an unknown partition. do i have to format this to assign a drive letter? i've right clicked it and all that is enabled is 'Delete Partition' and 'Help' :S.

any help appritiated. feel free to email me. thanks.
 
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