Portable Stick

[Guest]

My 1gb and 2gb memory sticks are showing power in my Compaq laptop, but they
do not appear in my Explore/file list. They did before. And yes, I recently
did a clean up of unused programs on the computer. Was I dumb and removed
something that I need to read the dopey stick?

 

[Guest]

Try this:
RightclicK on My Computer > Properties > Hardware Tab > Device Manager
button. Expand Disk drives > Double click Generic USB MS Reader USB Device >
On General Tab > (On the lowest part) Device Usage : Use this device
(enable) should be selected or you can troubleshoot from there.

 

[Guest]

You did a great job of navigating me to the troubleshoot level, it shows that
yes the stick is working in good order, identifies the name of the product.
Ran the wizard and it downloaded a driver date 2001 which seemed a little
early for a driver to run a stick. But after reboot, the stick USB stick
still is not in the directory. Sigh.

 

[Guest]

Does it show at My Computer?

You will also be able to see information the Control panel > Administrative
tools > Computer management > under Storage > Removable storage > Libraries.
Right click the MS reader > Properties > General tab, the Enable drive
shoiuld have a check mark. On the Device information tab does it have a Drive
letter: assignment?

Also at Control panel > Portable media devices. If the devices were showing
and memory stick inserted, Right click > Explore. Windows explorer should
launch.

Quote: "And yes, I recently did a clean up of unused programs on the
computer."
Have you tried Restore?

 

[Jim Snively]

Do you have mapped drives that might use the same drive letter as the data
stick? Go to Computer Management > Storage > Disk Management to see. There
you can change the drive letter to an unused one so the data stick shows up
in Windows Explorer.

My problem is that I have to map the drive letter each time I insert a data
stick and am looking for a more permanent drive letter mapping solution.

Jim Snively

 

[Guest]

Excellent Rey. As soon as I saw it was on Drive 0 after going thru your
protocol I knew that a couple days ago when I went through Tweak I had
unchecked all the supposedly "unused" Disk Drive labels, including E. When I
went back to Tweak I PUT A CHECK IN EACH drive box, and as you know my stick
magically appeared. Offda! Thanks also Jim.

 

[Uwe Sieber]

Do you have mapped drives that might use the same drive letter as the data
stick? Go to Computer Management > Storage > Disk Management to see. There
you can change the drive letter to an unused one so the data stick shows up
in Windows Explorer.

My problem is that I have to map the drive letter each time I insert a data
stick and am looking for a more permanent drive letter mapping solution.

I've made a software for this:
http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbdlm_e.html


Greetings from Germany

Uwe

 

[Guest]

That's a good catch to watch out for Uwe.

I've made a software for this:
http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbdlm_e.html


Greetings from Germany

Uwe

 

[Jim Snively]

I saw your software but was wondering why it is necessary. On some of my
machines once I change a drive letter the system remembers it the next time
I load the data stick. On the newest system it doesn't seem to. I found
anothe site that suggested mapping the data stick to a folder the get drive
letters to persist. I'm trying that first.

Jim Snively

 

[Guest]

My next idea is that of Jim the reason I asked if the drive has a letter
assignment, then it could be changed. Clearly you were able to analize each
post, congratulations!

 

[Uwe Sieber]

Windows saves letter assignments, but exactely one assigment
per letter only.
Sample: Drive1 is connected and you assign letter X. Then you
disconnect it. When you attach it again it gets letter X again
because Windows saved this assignment. Disconnect it again,
attach Drive2 and assign letter X, detach it and attach
Drive1 again. Drive1 get the the first free local letter now
beause the previous assingment has been superseded by Drive2.

Therefore there is always a rivalry for the first availlable
local letter.

The best solution is to assign one 'high' letter per USB drive,
far away from the first availlable one and away from network
drives too. Then no additional software is required.


Greeting from Germany

Uwe

 

[Jim Snively]

Uwe,

Our situation is this --
c: hdd
d: cd
e: network drive #1
f: network drive #2
g: network drive #3
usb drive gets mapped to e:

I use disk management to change it to h:
Two identical data sticks are used to backup and restore Quickbooks data
shared between a client user and an accountant. Two sticks provide for
redundancy in case one goes bad.

On the old machine (a 4 year old XP Home notebook) the h: mapping was
remembered. The new machine (an XP Professional tower) does not remember
the h: mapping. The use of disk management to remap e: to h: is too
complicated for the accountant as would be changing between h: and i.

Does something get written to the usb drive or is there some unique drive
identifier that windows uses to associate drive letter mappings?

Maybe I should download and use your software.

Jim Snively

 

[Uwe Sieber]

Are you sure that the old machine wasn't running under Windows 2000?
Here network drive where global object and therefore seen by the
mount manager. So, H: is seen then as first availlable letter.

I confess, I've tested an XP Home, but I'm quite sure that
it does not handle drive letter assignments different from
XP Pro. And Microsoft says that the 'problem' applies to all
XP versions:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/82821


Greetings from Germany

Uwe

 

[Guest]

Now related to all this about getting the drives to show for portable stick,
I see that the cd/dvd player does not show up on the Explore List. I reckon
it has to do with the drive letter not showing up...the diagnositic says the
player is installed properly. When go to Computer Management - Device
Manager the player is listed, but it has a yellow exclamation mark. What say
all?

Regards,
Tonder
====

 

[Guest]

Using Tweak UI: My Computer, Drives, see that all drives are checked.