USB Flash Devices Not mounting

[Guest]

After installing Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0 on my new corp. Compaq nc 6220
I noticed that any USB flash device will now not mount as a drive (I think
it's Photoshop because I also have received some SMS pushes over our corp.
network). I am able open, read & write the flash device using the Disk
Management utility . It also shows up in Safely Remove Hardware. I'm using
XP Professional Service Pack1. I have had Elements 3.0 on my turned in IBM XP
Professional Service Pack1 machine with out issues. USB hard drives mount
correctly.
I know about restore points but would rather not use this or uninstall...
Any other suggestions would be helpful.
Regards,
Neil

 

[John Wunderlich]

After installing Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0 on my new corp.
Compaq nc 6220 I noticed that any USB flash device will now not
mount as a drive (I think it's Photoshop because I also have
received some SMS pushes over our corp. network). I am able open,
read & write the flash device using the Disk Management utility .
It also shows up in Safely Remove Hardware. I'm using XP
Professional Service Pack1. I have had Elements 3.0 on my turned
in IBM XP Professional Service Pack1 machine with out issues. USB
hard drives mount correctly.
I know about restore points but would rather not use this or
uninstall... Any other suggestions would be helpful.

There is a bug in Windows where a Flash drive is assigned the same
drive letter as a mapped network drive. See:

"New drive or mapped network drive not available in Windows Explorer"
<http://support.microsoft.com/kb/297694/en-us>

HTH,
John

 

[Guest]

John, the problem exists even when I'm not connected to the network plus the
Network drive is z... I find that if I reboot with the flash card in the
PCMCIA slot or the USB card reader it will mount. If I eject or 'Safely
Remove Hardware' it will not remount. Applications can see the F drive with
open or save... It seems like every thing is working except the icon doesn't
appear in my computer.

Thanks,
Neil

 

[John Wunderlich]

John, the problem exists even when I'm not connected to the
network plus the Network drive is z... I find that if I reboot
with the flash card in the PCMCIA slot or the USB card reader it
will mount. If I eject or 'Safely Remove Hardware' it will not
remount. Applications can see the F drive with open or save...
It seems like every thing is working except the icon doesn't
appear in my computer.

Thanks,
Neil

It's a real shot-in-the-dark, but perhaps the icon itself is screwed
up. It wouldn't be the first time an install screwed up the icon
cache...
Try rebuilding the icon cache...

Right-click desktop->Properties->Appearance Tab->Advanced
Under "Item" select "Icon"
Increase size by 1 (32 changes to 33)
then click "OK" twice to close two windows.
The icon cache will then rebuild.
Repeat process to decrease icon size by 1 to bring things back to
normal.

Good Luck,
John

 

[Guest]

John, I tried with no luck :-(

It appears that Windows Explorer and My Computer are the only places that
the F drive does not appear.... Very strange... Is there something in
Explorer app???

Thanks,
Neil

 

[John Wunderlich]

John, I tried with no luck :-(

It appears that Windows Explorer and My Computer are the only
places that the F drive does not appear.... Very strange... Is
there something in Explorer app???

Thanks,
Neil

What a wierd coincidence -- I went to work today and a fellow worker
had developed your exact problem. Now I see what you're up against. I
was able to fix it, though. It turned out that when my fellow worker
installed the free Adobe Reader, it also installed a program called
"Adobe Photoshop Album Starter Edition 3.0". I noticed that every time
I inserted my thumb drive in his machine, it always brought up this
application even when I specified to do nothing on insertion.

The solution was to go to the Control Panel -> Add/Remove Programs,
Select the Adobe Photoshop Album... program and uninstall it. After
that, everything worked just fine again.

This is obviously an Adobe bug. I'll wager that if you remove your
Adobe application, the functionality will return. Your next step would
be to contact Adobe's Support if you need to use their application.

HTH,
John

 

[Guest]

John, very interesting... In my case it was Adobe Downloader that was
harassing me with no obvious (easy) way to disable it. I did finally find
the buried preference checkbox to disable the downloader. It looks like
Adobe Elements 3.0 is all or nothing when looking at Add Remove Programs and
I do need Photoshop. Everything is functioning although in a unique way so I
have to decide to leave well enough alone or continue the quest for
perfection?????

A point of interest...

When I was trying to avoid having the downloader launch when I plugged in a
flash drive I tried to change the drive letter which worked and the
downloader moved with me to the new drive letter... I then later found the
disable checkbox... For grins I just went back and enabled the downloader
and now it will not launch on insertion...

Thanks for all of your help!

Neil

 

[John Wunderlich]

Maybe it is the downloader. I found the following post in the Adobe
Forums that had no reply except to file a problem report:
---------------
Photo Downloader hides USB sticks in My Computer
David Slade - 05:57pm Nov 26, 2005 Pacific

Album Starter v3.0: When I load USB sticks they do not show up in My
Computer unless I exit Photo Downloader in the tray first.
The USB stick does show in MS Word Open command on the File menu but
after a long delay. I have seen & tried a fix that unassociates
images with Album but this has not fixed this problem.
---------------