Computers & Networking

[RollsRoyce235]

Hello!

I have been using a USB pen drive for the past three years. Suddenly, my computer stops recognizing it, but yet sometimes it still does. Then, my computer wouldn't turn on one day, and this happened several other times before I discovered that it was because of my USB pen drive. The pen drive works perfectly on other computers.

What happened? What should I do? Do I need to buy a new pen drive?

Thank you so much!

[AaronE]

My first step would be to get all my information I care about off of that drive.

Second step would be to buy a new one. They're really inexpensive so it's not worth taking the risk on continuing to use a potentially failing drive.

[rwillen]

The issues in your other thread should resolved by Aarons answer here.

[xl]

What happens if you plug it into a different USB port?

[TheLexMachine]

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AaronE wrote:

My first step would be to get all my information I care about off of that drive.

Second step would be to buy a new one. They're really inexpensive so it's not worth taking the risk on continuing to use a potentially failing drive.

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It's a known design flaw in Windows, it's registry system, and how it handles USB removable storage devices over time. The appropriate (and only) solution is to go into the registry and remove all the entries that list the USB storage device, as they build up over time, causing the OS to eventually not recognize it. It can take about ten minutes to do and it's very tedious, but once it is done, things go back to normal.

[joea64]

This is actually the first I've heard of that Windows glitch. I've never encountered it before on XP Pro, and I've been using USB flash drives for five years now (the first one I ever bought was a 1GB  SanDisk at BB in Feb. '07). Of course, I may not have been using any of my flash drives frequently enough for the problem to come up. Can you supply some more details or link to somewhere that explains the issue?

[TheLexMachine]

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joea64 wrote:

This is actually the first I've heard of that Windows glitch. I've never encountered it before on XP Pro, and I've been using USB flash drives for five years now (the first one I ever bought was a 1GB  SanDisk at BB in Feb. '07). Of course, I may not have been using any of my flash drives frequently enough for the problem to come up. Can you supply some more details or link to somewhere that explains the issue?

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Just search "usb device not recognized registry entries" and you'll find plenty of stuff. Every time a USB device is plugged in to a USB port on your computer, Windows makes a registry entry. At some point there are too many entries for a particular device or the registry contains conflicting information and that means you have to essentially "reinstall" the device by wiping it from the registry. Sometimes a device works normally if plugged into another port and sometimes it doesn't. Another reason it may not work is the USB power allocation flaw which you can also research at the same time.

[RollsRoyce235]

Hello!

Thank you for the information. I would like to fix the USB drive that I have.

Can you please give me the step-by-step points to "go into the registry and remove all the entries that list the USB storage device" as you mentioned above. I am not very computer savey, so that line made no sense to me, but I would love to give it a try. I just need to know exactly where to go and what to do in my computer.

THANK YOU!!

[RollsRoyce235]

Hello!

Thank you for the information. I would like to fix the USB drive that I have.

Can you please give me the step-by-step points to "go into the registry and remove all the entries that list the USB storage device" as you mentioned above. I am not very computer savey, so that line made no sense to me, but I would love to give it a try. I just need to know exactly where to go and what to do in my computer.

THANK YOU!!