USB does not show up in My Computer or Explorer

[joeth]

When I plug in a thumb drive or ipod via the usb ports on my computer I get
no icon or listing under "devices with removable storage" in the My Computer
screen, and nothing comes up under Explorer either. Previously these devices
would appear as Drive E in both places.

Can anybody suggest how to fix this? In other respects the plug-ins are
working normally, but I am prevented from seeing the contents of the external
storage device.

 

[Rey Santos]

Try this:
Right click My Computer > Manage > Under Computer Management > Storage >
Disk Management > Do you see the drive. If so, right click it > Change drive
letter and path... > Change button > Assign a new drive letter.

 

[joeth]

Thanks - I've tried that a couple of times. The USB appeared in Storage Disk
Management as Drive E - I changed it to F, and that didn't work. I tried
restarting the computer after making the change but the drive is still not
displayed in MyComputer or Explorer.
Can you suggest another approach?

 

[Rey Santos]

If drives E and F are not in conflict with other drves (Not yet used) then
you have other problems.

Do you have TweakUI
(http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx )
installed? It can hide the drives. In tweakUI window click on "My Computer",
on the right pane make sure that the drives are checked. Unchecked, means
they are hidden.

If you enter Safe Mode does the USB appear? If it does appear, some programs
not running in Safe mode but only in Normal mode could be interfering with
the USB. You can use the Task Manager to end suspicous processses in Normal
mode that are not running in Safe mode. These processes/programs are not
necessarily malwares, uninstall and reinstall could sometimes solve the
problem.