USB Flash drives not recognized

**Solomon** · 19-03-2007

Whenever I try to plug a USB drive in Windows Vista, I am also getting prompts to install the driver for it on the OS and the USB Mass storage device is not recognized. I have recently upgraded from windows xp to vista. Prior to the upgrade one Sandisk Cruzer usb drive was installed in the machine which was working properly in xp and it is able to work on any other machines except vista. Can anyone please help me out. Thanks

**Glenny** · 19-03-2007

It seems that there are many people facing this issue under Vista. But I was the lucky one to solve this issue. Even I was having a 2gb Sandisk Cruzer USB Flash Drive with me which has some U3 thing installed on it. So, I took the liberty to go to the U3 website and downloaded some of their tools to remove this U3 crap from the flash drive and formatted it to NTFS file format. After doing all this troubleshooting, now this drive is fully able to be recognized under Vista. You could try this methods as well to solve your issue.

**need Tos** · 19-03-2007

Try the below steps for the Sandisk Cruzer drive to get recognized by Vista:

First of all download the latest U3 software from Sandisk site.
Connect the Sandisk drive to the USB 2.0 port and allow Vista to install its drivers.
See if you are fully able to access the drives in your computer.
After that install that U3 LaunchPad installer by pointing the install to the drive where the Launchu3.exe is settled.
Now the installer will do its thing, by backing up the files and flashing the same drive and after sometime the drive will be restored with all the files.

**diversls** · 06-07-2010

To make any usb device work on vista. When it asks where driver is just direct it to look in the C: drive, with subfolders, the whole thing. It will then install any usb device.

**dallasgoldbug** · 28-02-2011

let me throw something in the ring. Vista ultimate, loaded up and was working fine for 6 months, one day I put webroot spysweeper on it and within a day the usb ports went out only thing that would recognize was a passport 320 gig drive. no mouse, no flash cards, nothing but the external drive.

got fed up but has success rolling it back prior to the install of Spysweeper. but then a day later same thing happens. This time I start looking in the microsoft updates for the problem. I uninstall spy sweep and didn't help, uninstalled any updates, didn't help, and rolled it back to where it worked before, but this time shes a no go.

So fed up once again I decide to wipe the drive and reinstall. I do so and boot up. Same problem as before. Had to go buy a old school mouse because programs that use flash as their install gui app don't recognize the tab button to navigate. (sucks) so instead of a nice wireless keyboard and mouse Im stuck tethered to the machine like cave man times.

I cant figure it out. Checked the drivers, went through the registry. Cant seen to understand why it was working fine then all of a sudden Nada.

intel 4300 1.8 dual core
ATI Radeon HD 4300/4500 Series
ACPI x86-based PC
32 inch lcd philips monitor HDMI

**samar69** · 01-03-2011

I have analyzed the problem which is being faced by you and it seems to me that I can really help you out in the same. Well the error you are facing here is due to the operating system that you are using and now what you have to do here is that just try and reinstall the operating system and if it is not possible then you can run the windows repair utility which will allow you to fix the issue caused by the same. I am sure that reinstalling the operating system that is Vista ultimate in this case will definitely help you to solve the issue.