[MGritts22]

Please help me out...

Hello GeeksToGo, and once again, thank you all the help you have (and hopefully will) provide!
I have recently had trouble with my USB devices. I have a USB drive (128mb) and an iPod that recently havn't been working. I think this is because of a recent OS Restore I performed with my Windows XP Professional CD.

I plug my usb device in, and the taskbar icon pops up, showing my PC has found a USB device. I go into My Computer to access it, and it isn't there.

I thought this was because I might have to manually assign a drive letter. I right click My Computer, and go to Manage. Then, I go to Disk Management on the left-hand side panel. It loads, and I right click the drive that is having trouble and assign it a letter, usually from T-Z, even though before the OS Restore it would come up as F:\.

After this, I go to My Computer, and it doesn't show up. I have tried hitting refresh, it still doesn't work. However, I can access the drive from any other program than windows explorer. even if I right-click explore in Disk Management it opens.

I reboot the computer, and the drive letter goes away.

I have tried reinstalling all USB Drivers several times.

I tried formatting the drive through Manage>Disk Management. It didn't work, and I got an error message saying:

"The operation did not complete because the partition or volume is not enabled. To enable the partition or volume, restart the computer."

Then I reformatted it on a different computer, and it didn't change anything.

I tried this and it did not work. I tried enabling it through Device Manager. (which by the way has no Yellow "!" marks or Red X's.) It said it was already enabled, and when I even disabled it and re-enabled it, it didn't work.

I heard somewhere that this might be a service conflict or error?

It seems I've tried everything, and I hope I'm wrong. This problem has been at my throat for about 6 months now. Thanks again, you guys are a huge help.

Sincerely,
Mike

Edited by MGritts22, 03 August 2006 - 02:49 PM.

[Advertisements]

This can be a potential issue with items that are plugged into front USB ports when they aren't wired up correctly.

Does it still exhibit this behaviour when you use the USB ports on the back of the computer?

[Neil Jones]

This can be a potential issue with items that are plugged into front USB ports when they aren't wired up correctly.

Does it still exhibit this behaviour when you use the USB ports on the back of the computer?

[MGritts22]

Yes, I'm afraid so.

Thanks for the response.

[RjBass]

I actually had this same problem not long ago and looked for help here. Before help could be given I found the source of the problem.

I'm not one of the staff here, so please take what I say lightly as the staff here are far more intelligent on these matters then I am.

First open your computer and check to see if you have any type of drive (cd, dvd, network) as the e: drive.

If so then you will need to change the drive letter of that drive. From what I have witnessed on many machines, if you have another drive labeled as the e: drive, then most usb devices wont show or be usable. I had the same problem on all of my home machines when I mapped a network drive to e:. All of a sudden I could no longer see my digital camera, flash drives, or in once case even the printer.

I hope that helps.

[MGritts22]

Thank you very much for another reply, I did have a DVD Burner as drive E:, but I changed it to Drive X: and it didn't fix anything.

I like to hope we're getting somewhere. I might be reformatting soon, so hopefully this would fix the problem.

Thanks again.