Usb Device Problem

Gavin57

Tonight I plugged in a USB Pen Drive I could hear it connecting to computer but no "what do you want to do" dialogue appeared The power light to the usb pen was lit. I checked under My Computer no USB drive visible though my partitioned hard drives and DVD rom are visible.
I tried different usb sockets and a different usb pen with the same result. I had a look under computer management - storage disk management and there is no sign of any of my hard drives or the usb pen drive only the dvd rom is visible.
I have plugged in an external usb hard drive and that is recognised and working.
The only sofware recently installed was from microsoft updates. I did try IE8 but could not get it to work so reverted back to IE7.
There are no exclamation marks in hardware manager.
Does anyone have any ideas what may have happened to usb pen connections and know how to get my usb pen drive recognised so that I can access it.

Ice_2

happened to me, after I had plugged in my external hard drive, I re-set my laptop back to factory settings and this sorted it out.

S0litaire

DON'T RESET THE LAPTOP!!!

all you need to do is Plug in the USB go into "Device management"
If it pops up in there, right click on it and remove it!

Unplug the USB and then reboot..

Next time you plug the USB in it should do the "Found new device" thing....

You can then use it as normal.

Gavin57

Usb Pen drive is not showing up in device management. My hard drive are not visible in device management only dvd rom is visible.
Its a desktop machine not a laptop and I am using XP Pro.
For some reason my system restore not working either.
Probably try a repair of system from disk.

GunJack

sounds like you've picked up an infection.....might be an idea to download, update and full scan with Malwarebytes and ost the log back here as a first step..

Ice_2

anything is worth a try, I would try the repair with disc, then see what happens...I know this is only a minor thing cos it happened to me, but as I said I reset my lappy.
that seemed to work for me.
I would go for the repair.

Gavin57

GunJack wrote: »

sounds like you've picked up an infection.....might be an idea to download, update and full scan with Malwarebytes and ost the log back here as a first step..

Scans of computer does not pick up any infection.

Gavin57

I tried repairing computer with XP installation disk but that did not get my usb drives back. Today I was getting pop-ups and other error messages and was considering reinstalling windows. As a next to last resort I scanned using Spybot- search and destroy, Ad-aware, Malwarebytes-anti-malware they all picked up a number of problems which they repaired. Finally I ran SUPERAntiSpyware Free Edition this picked up a few other problems which it repaired and to my surprise my card reader was now visible and I am now able again to access my usb pen drives. Over the next few days I will be keeping an eye on computer and repeat the various scans for any problems that may arise.

macman

What antivirus software are you using?-whatever it is is not doing the job.
Failure to do System Restore is a strong indication of infection, is it working now?

Gavin57

I am using Avast have not tried system restore at the moment. I was just going to try running computer as is at moment see what happens. If it came to the worst I will reinstall windows.

GunJack

Gavin - as I and macman pointed out, it sounded too much like an infection not to be an infection, IYSWIM Glad it's getting better....just remember to keep your security suite up-to-date, just in case of next time