inaccessable Sandisk Cruzer 512 USB stick

[TKS]

Hi people,

I own a Sandisk Cruzer micro 512 and have the following problem with it:
A while ago i cleared the first sector on the usb stick to put a MBR and a
primary partition on the stick so that i could boot from it. Worked
flawlessly but since then i can no longer access the stick from windows,
only from (real floppy booted) DOS. If i plug the stick in when windows is
running, windows freezes completely. When i remove the stick windows
un-freezes with no errors or logged messages. Same thing happens when i use
BART PE windows. If i connect the stick before booting windows, windows
stops at the statusbar screen after loading the prefetch data and just
before showing the welcome screen. If i then disconnect the stick windows
simply continues to boot, no errors.
I've tried wiping the entire stick, putting in a bootsector only, using
different partition types, using an extended partition only, putting in a
clean MBR (no partitions) only, nothing helps: in DOS the stick is
accessable (reading/writing works fine), when connected in windows
everything freezes.
Anybody have any ideas? Does somebody have a cruzer like mine and would
he/she be willing to check the first few sectors on it so see what's there?
Much appreciated, thanks.

Tom

 

[dougreic]

I bought a Sandisk Cruzer micro 512 to use as a backup device. I
wanted to just leave it plugged into USB port all of the time. I soon
found out that the computer would not boot up with the Sandisk
installed. I tried this on two computers with two different Sandisks.
Always the same, no boot up. Other than that the Sandisk work OK.

I have another brand of flash disk, JMTek, which works great and I can
leave it intalled all of the time with no boot up problem.

This isn't exactly the problem that you are having but I thought you
might be interested in my experience.

Doug

 

[Harry]

TKS wrote...

Hi people,

I own a Sandisk Cruzer micro 512 and have the following problem with it:
A while ago i cleared the first sector on the usb stick to put a MBR and a
primary partition on the stick so that i could boot from it. Worked
flawlessly but since then i can no longer access the stick from windows,
only from (real floppy booted) DOS.

I only have a *working* SanDisk Cruzer mini 512MB usb stick.
It can boot to dos to run ghost8. It can be plugged in and
recognized by Windows XP Home.

I created my USB using FlashBoot and a bootable ghost8 floppy.
http://www.prime-expert.com/flashboot/

Hope this help.

 

[Harry]

TKS wrote...
....

If i plug the stick in when windows is
running, windows freezes completely. When i remove the stick windows
un-freezes with no errors or logged messages. Same thing happens when i use
BART PE windows.

Since you mentioned Bart PE....

FlasBoot can also install your bootable Bart-PE CD (or ISO) onto
your USB stick. So that you now have a bootable Bart-BE on your USB stick.

I haven't try this option myself. But the FalshBoot U.I. has such
an option.