USB and Flash Drive

[sonicj]

Running WinXP Home 2002 SP2 on a Dell Dimension DE051. When I plug a flash
drive into either USB port on the front, the drive does not appear in My
Computer window. When I look in the device manager it "sees" the drive and
reads that it is operating properly. When I go to stop it, the drive is also
seen. Each of the ports appear as Location 0. The drive works in other
computers and I tested other drives and still the same problem. Any ideas?
Thank you.

 

[Big Al]

Running WinXP Home 2002 SP2 on a Dell Dimension DE051. When I plug a flash
drive into either USB port on the front, the drive does not appear in My
Computer window. When I look in the device manager it "sees" the drive and
reads that it is operating properly. When I go to stop it, the drive is also
seen. Each of the ports appear as Location 0. The drive works in other
computers and I tested other drives and still the same problem. Any ideas?
Thank you.

Look in Control Panel|Administrative Tools|Computer Management|Disk
Management. See it there?
Do you have mapped drives on your system, as a mapped drive takes
precedence over a USB drive. If both occupy the same letter, change
one of them.

 

[sonicj]

You nailed it! Thank you.

Look in Control Panel|Administrative Tools|Computer Management|Disk
Management. See it there?
Do you have mapped drives on your system, as a mapped drive takes
precedence over a USB drive. If both occupy the same letter, change
one of them.

 

[joeth]

I have the same problem. The USB does not show up in My Computer or Windows
Explorer. I can find the USB drive in Disk Management as per your advice but
there seems to be no duplication of letters. Only the hard disk (C drive)
and CDROM (D drive) are listed as well - the USB is listed as E drive. I
don't know of any mapped drives on my system that would be blocking the USB
but how do I check?

 

[Big Al]

I have the same problem. The USB does not show up in My Computer or Windows
Explorer. I can find the USB drive in Disk Management as per your advice but
there seems to be no duplication of letters. Only the hard disk (C drive)
and CDROM (D drive) are listed as well - the USB is listed as E drive. I
don't know of any mapped drives on my system that would be blocking the USB
but how do I check?

Mapped drives show up as letters in your My Computer, just like E: F: or
G: etc. If you've never use this, you can share a folder, lets say on
another PC2. Then in explorer you can click Tools|Map Network Drive|.
You type in like \\PC2\Folder (or whatever name you gave the share)
and pick a drive letter. Now you get a Drive but its really a link to
that folder on the other PC2. Its kinda like my network places.
The difference is the path is like F:\xxx.jpg not \\PC2\folder\xxx.jpg.
It's about the same but has flavor differences and side effects in
the OS, like all mapped drives usually reconnect at boot, and if the PC2
is off you get huge delays in bootup trying to connect to missing
hardware. Minor issues.

 

[joeth]

Thanks - I get it.
Can you suggest another reason why the USB doesn't show up in Explorer etc?
and what I should do about it?

 

[Big Al]

Thanks - I get it.
Can you suggest another reason why the USB doesn't show up in Explorer etc?
and what I should do about it?

Sorry, Not off the top of my head.

 

[Uwe Sieber]

I've put together some known reasons for external drives not
being shown in the Windwos Explorer:
http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbtrouble_e.html


Uwe