xp doesnt see USB jump drive

[Magill]

Acer notebook, xp home SP2. I have 3 USB ports. All ports recognize a USB mouse if I plug it in, so the ports are working. I have a USB jump drive that XP sees intermittently. I often have to restart the machine to see the jump drive. Any idea what this could be.
Could this be a registry issue? Is there a free, good registry repair utility. Not even sure why I'm thinking that.

[Steve R Jones]

Might turn off the Power Mgmt feature for the USB Roob Hub in device manager.

[Magill]

I've done as suggested, Steve, but no improvement.

[Magill]

I see now that the USB drive appears in disk management, it just doesn't show up in My Computer. It has drive letter D assigned to it. Any idea how I can access it?

K

[SuperSparks]

Try reformatting the drive in Disk Management (be aware that you'll lose any data that's on it) - right-click on the drive and choose Format. It won't show up in My Computer unless it is formatted in a way that Windows is happy with.

[Magill]

Something that I did not explain in my earlier post is that if I restarted my computer, it would usually recognize the drive. However, at some point later in the day if I plugged in the drive, it would not show up.
Just now, in the course of looking at Disk Management I jumped into Services and discovered the Removable Storage service was disabled. I reset it to automatic and started it. The jump drive still did not appear in My Computer but I figured I needed to restart the system for it to kick in. Sure enough, on the restart the jump drive shows up. I'll wait and see if it disappears again later.

[Magill]

I seem to be back where I started. I plugged the jump drive into a port and it shows up in Disk Management but not in My Computer
Thanks for any help.

KM

[SuperSparks]

What is the status of the drive reported as in Disk Management? If you could post a screenshot it would be good.

[Magill]

Shows up as Healthy, Active.

Sorry, havent quite figured out how to post a screenshot.

Or maybe I have.

[SuperSparks]

Hmmmmmm, I'm afraid that's got me baffled then It is certainly showing exactly as it should do there, so it ought to appear in Windows Explorer. In Explorer, try pressing F5 after you have plugged the drive in, and see if that makes it show up.

[Magill]

My latest observations:

I have one harddrive - it is identified as "C" in Disk Mangement and Explorer

I have one optical drive - it is "E"

If I plug the USB jump drive in, it appears as "D" in Disk Management but sometimes does not show up in Explorer (this seems to be an intermittent problem - if I restart Windows the drive appears properly in Explorer)

If, using Disk Management, I change the jump drive to "E" and the optical to "F", then the jump appears in Explorer but the optical disappears.

It seems Windows will only show 2 drives in Explorer - sometimes.
Bizarre

[Train]

Try permanently bumping up the cd device on letter.

Right-click My Computer, and then click Manage.
Under Computer Management, click Disk Management. In the right pane, you’ll see your drives listed. CD-ROM drives are listed at the bottom of the pane.
Right-click the drive or device you want to change, and then click Change Drive Letter and Paths.
Click Change, click Assign the following drive letter, click the drive letter you want to assign, and then click OK.

[NorthernBloke]

As mentioned earlier.

the disk manager will assign letters based on internal rules. All well and goo until a problem like this happens.

take out all USB devices (not keyboard or mouse - I didnt need to mention did I) In disk manager set cd to d. reboot. insert USB and see what it gives.
If it still plays up. change the CD to Z(or similar) then in device manager uninstall CD and USB drivers if you can. shutdown, remove power from CD and switch on. Insert USB and see what its done. shutdown, power on CD, reboot.

Once windows starts assigning letters to drives its a pain - I've seen it a couple of times - really should have written down a proper solution.