USB Flash Drive - Disk not formatted error

Windows XP is having a problem with USB flash drives on my system. When I
plug them in they are assigned a drive letter, but if I try to open them up I
get a "disk not formatted" error.

I've spent hours working on this but am getting nowhere. I know the USB
devices are working, and I know my USB ports are good.

- This error occurs on every USB device which is accessed as a folder (have
tried several flash drives from several manufacturers)
- The drives work fine on other XP systems
- Other USB devices, like GPS, Webcam, digital camera, printer, work fine

I've gone into the control panel and have uninstalled all the USB drivers
multiple times, rebooted, and let them reinstall. Same problem.

Windows recognizes the device and size correctly when I view the properties.
If I attempt to format the drive, I just get an error: The format did not
complete successfully.

Anyone have any clues to what might be going on?? Thanks for any pointers.

As a despiration measure, you might try dragging the file:
C:\Windows\inf\INFCACHE.1
into the trash (don't empty trash just in case), and reboot.
Note that the "inf" directory is a hidden directory.
This should force a fresh reload of the driver.

Thanks. Unfortunately that's one of the things I tried and it didn't seem
to solve the problem. In another newsgroup someone mentioned deleting this
file, plus removing some entries in the registry under the
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Enum\USB\ branch which point to USB Mass
Storage device drivers.

I was able to delete the file, but I wasn't able to remove those entries in
the registry. It looked like they were locked somehow.

Strange. I had no problem deleting the registry entries on my machine.
As Administrator, try right-clicking on one of the folders in Regedit,
then select "Permissions" to see if you have a permissions problem.


I learn something new every day. I didn't realize you could right click and
get the permissions, but that was the problem with the registry. I set the
permissions and deleted the keys, but after a reboot and reconfigure of the
USB ports, I still have the same problem.

I had the same problem. I finally found THE solution: re-instal WindowsXP!

[ivan2]

I had exactly the same problem, same symptoms. Only USB sticks produced "not formatted error", hard disks and other devices worked normally. No solutions anywhere on forums, but if you notice the problem soon enough, there is one. It must have been the registry, since I solved it by finding a restore point 2 days old, and luckily everything is OK now. So I will never know where the problem in the registry was.

[R.D]

Ive had a similar problem and could not fix it, until, - if you don't need the data to be recovered then try this out it works in recovering dead usb sticks, and in changing the format or recovery of a stick to any format you choose. First get a copy of UBUNTU 8 or 9 , plug in your usb stick and if it ask you what to do, then skip a bit of what i say next, go to the part where it ask you - Do you want to use the usb device as a boot disk - say yes - format the device, - remove the usb stick, - and reformat it in your computer as what ever you want 16 bit , 32bit , NTSC. The usb stick should now be working, if not give it to someone you don't like. -Also remember this - hard drives have a simular problem - can not load windows or will not read you can also try this out on them, or, you could get a keyboard with a F lock key try a Microsoft Digital Media (business pack) turn on the F lock and then load windows, this will recover your hard drive.

[Happirock]

I had the "disk not formatted" problem and solved it for my flash drives by formatting them into NTFS and not FAT32.

It worked for my 512MB and 2GB flash drives.

I am still having problems with my 320GB USB drive (that should already be NTFS) and my digital camera.