XP SP2 can't open USB flash drive

All other USB devices (cam, scanner, mouse, keyboard) work fine. The USB flash drive is recognized by the OS. I can see the hard drive is installed and ready to use notification in the lower right corner.

Disk management will show the drive but w/o a letter. I can assign a letter manually and dir will list its content in command prompt. However, it won't show up in My Computer.

When I right click on the drive in Disk Manager and choose open, it will say the drive does not exist. Try again, this will actually open the drive, except that the address bar is blank. Then I can read from that folder correctly.

I've tried to remove all USB controller in device manager, reboot and let Windows re-detect/install them. Still the same problem.

What can I do to fix it?

Thanks!

Hey..!
Try this after assigning the drive letter to your drive, reboot your computer. or format your pendrive from command prompt if you can read its content in command prompt... All the best!

Try to use another USB flash drive & see if same thing happens!
May be your flash drive is affected by worm or virus.

The device might not be supporting PnP or Plug and Play.
Fors such devices, you dont need any drivers.
Check the documentation or the packet of the drive to see if the feature is supported or not.
If not, get the drivers.

Alternatively, just for assurance,
Go to Run... and type services.msc

Scroll down to the service named "Universal Plug And Play Device Host" and ensure its status is either Manual or Automatic.

Hi,

You may have to lose the data that is on it in order to use it again.
With the drive in a usb port, click on "removable drive X", then click on format. Usually it is ok after being reformatted.

Format won't work.

The drive works on other machines with SP2 fine.

The BIOS PnP is left as Auto.

I've found the fixes

In KHLM\SYSTEM\MountedDevice, delete everything except those letters for hard drives.

These include those starting with # and \??\Volume

Reboot, and all flash drives work.

According to

http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/partsigs.htm

The \??\Volume are how XP remembered the devices. Since the mobo/usb controllers have been replaced, these might cause some confusion.