Flash drives stopped working, show up in device management but not disk management.

[Tinklehoy]

Since about a month ago I've been unable to access flash drives on my PC. I've tried four separate flash drives, three of which I've used previously with this PC, the other being brand new. They don't show up in disk management, but I can find them under "other devices" in device management. They all show a yellow exclamation mark and when I click Properties the device status says that drivers aren't installed. I've tried uninstalling and scanning for hardware changes and when I do it shows the flash drive installing but nothing changes.

The flash drives work on other computers.

Help please.

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Hey Tinklehoy. Have you tried updating the drivers instead of reinstalling the old Universal Serial Bus controller drivers? Other than that, I'd recommend that you follow the instructions from this article here: http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/504/how-to-uninstall-hidden-devices-drivers-and-services/
And uninstall all the greyed out devices from the USB controller section as well as the flash drives again, then restart and connect the flash drive again to see if that fixes the issue.

Hope that helps.
Boogieman_WD

 

[Tinklehoy]

Thank you for the response Boogieman. My Universal Serial Bus controller drivers are up to date, it is the flash drive drivers that my system says aren't installed, though they show an installation bar when I plug them in and work on other computers.. I followed the instructions given in the link you provided and uninstalled the greyed out USB controllers and the flash drives but unfortunately it didn't fix the problem after restarting the PC. If you need any more information I'd be happy to provide it but I'm not sure what is pertinent or could be causing the issue.

I appreciate the help.

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Was there something in particular you did before this happened? Can you do a system restore before that point? Other than that this is a bit puzzling. Do any other types of USB devices work properly e.g. mouse, keyboard, USB external drive?

 

[Tinklehoy]

I can't think of anything in particular I've done that might have caused this, but I don't remember when it started happening exactly because at first I thought it was a problem with the flash drive I was using. Only recently I realized no flash drives were working at all. My mouse and keyboard work perfectly, but an external hard drive that I've used on this computer a couple months ago doesn't.

I did do a system restore to the earliest point that I could (should be around the time the issue arose) and the problem was still present. I've also done anti-virus scans just in case and everything was fine.

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Hmm.. I've found a thread which is about the same problem as yours. There are some solutions offered which might prove helpful (not the best answer, because it sounds like in the end it turned out to be a problem with the particular drive) but take a look through the posts in the thread and try some of the given options: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-1715688/usb-device-recognized-mass-storage-optical-mouse-works.html
I hope that one of the offered solutions turns out to be the right one (probably the one in the last post). Good luck!

 

[Tinklehoy]

As for the last solution I don't have anything called Mass Storage Device under Universal Serial Bus controllers. I'm not sure how to fix that though even after some research. Would that be related to my motherboard drivers? Or a windows issue?

Thank you for all of the help.

 

[Boogieman_WD]

No worries, I'm sorry that I can't seem to find the right solution for the issue you're having. It could be OS related in some way, it does sound like this could be a software issue rather than a hardware problem, which should have a more simpler solution than reinstalling the OS, but unfortunately I just can figure it out. It could be driver related issue, that's why I recommended that you reinstall/update them even if it shows you that everything is fine.

It sounds like for some reason Windows doesn't recognize the external drives and the USB flash drives as storage devices. Take a look at this thread here as well: http://superuser.com/questions/619318/windows-7-doesnt-recognize-usb-devices-anymore
It has two 3rd party USB tools which might be able to solve the problem or at least, hopefully - shed some light on the issue.

 

[Tinklehoy]

I tried the two programs suggested in the link you provided. Unfortunately the first one didn't help and I'm not too sure what to do with the second (usbdeview). It recognizes when I have flash drives plugged in but I still can't access them.

This seems to fit my issues http://www.techspot.com/community/topics/how-to-repair-corrupt-usb-mass-storage-or-cd-dvd-drivers.201738/
Following the instructions I found that I'm missing the first two mass storage device inf/pnf files, and I'm missing the .pnf from the file repository folder. Since that seems like a Windows problem should I try a system "refresh?" Or would that be a bad idea considering my copy of windows is on a flash drive... haha.

 

[Boogieman_WD]

About the second program, I guess you could try uninstalling all previous USB storage devices if it recognizes them to see if the flash drives would work after reconnecting any of them. As for the system "refresh", if it is indeed a Windows issue, then you should be OK with the USB flash drive. I'd suggest that you first try booting from it, without starting up anything (like new installation or something), just to see if it boots properly and if everything seems fine, then yes, you could try that.