Vista crash has made USB device inaccessible

[Guest]

device cannot start. (Code 10)." I think Windows believes the USB device is a
CD drive, since it shows a non-existent h: CD drive. I have tried everything
I can think of, inluding trying to update the driver (Vista says I already
have the most recent driver) and uninstalling the driver (hoping that Windows
would re-install it and recognize my USB device). NOthing has worked. My 4 GB
device is useless, and I have a non-existent CD drive showing on my system.

Other USB thumb drives work normally.

(Don't even ask about how Vista crashed at least 4 times in my first week of
owning it, while I'm not sure XP ever did.)

 

[MattersNot]

Try physically disconnecting the usb device from the
computer, reboot and let us know what happens.

 

[Guest]

This is turning into A HUGE annoyance. Naturally I disconnnected the USB
device and rebooted - one of the first things I did. Since then I've done all
kinds of things, mostly within device manager. None of that worked. Then I
tried the techniques Fred Langa has mentioned recently in the Windows Secrets
newsletter about phantom device, although I don't think his ideas were really
directed at Windows Vista - at http://windowssecrets.com/comp/070405/#langa1
and http://windowssecrets.com/paid/070412#langa0. No success. Then I tried a
method that Windows itself suggested in a Help window, attempting to
uninstall using the command prompt and pnputil.exe. That didn't work either.

I still have a dead 4GB flash drive and an annoying h: icon for a fake CD
drive.

The makers of the flash drive, Kingston, put me off with a simple, "Return
it to the dealer for a refund," but, (1) wouldn't you know it, I can't find
the receipt, and (2) the device does work on my computer at work after I
reformatted it. That leaves the lone culprit to be the OS, Windows Vista, and
its confusion over devices. And so far it's been very frustrating trying to
find help on the Microsoft site.

This appears to need some deep expertise.

 

[Don]

deschr wrote:
....

I still have a dead 4GB flash drive and an annoying h: icon for a fake CD
drive.

The makers of the flash drive, Kingston, put me off...

I have a 2GB Kingston USB stick which appeared as a CD drive until I
removed the U3 partition with the 'U3 removal tool' I downloaded from
their website. (Dunno if you have the U3 stuff, or if you want it.)

Anyway, there is a real Vista bug which renders Vista unable to find
drivers for devices that should not need drivers, e.g. USB sticks.

Try this experiment: delete the file C:\windows\inf\INFCACHE.1 which
may be corrupted. You will need to edit its file permissions to grant
Full Control to the Users group before you will be allowed to delete it.

 

[Richard Urban]

The fake CD drive is caused by the S3 implementation of your USB thumb
drive. In Windows XP the drive, when plugged in, will also create a CD
drive - along with the writable portion of the thumb drive.

Your S3 implementation is not Vista compatible. Go to the manufacturers web
site and see if they have a Vista compatible version that can le loaded onto
your thumb drive.

BTW: I see the same thing on my computer. The very latest USB thumb drives
are labeled as Vista compatible. The older ones, of course, are not.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!