USB Thumb Drive not Automatically Installed

[jasonlitka]

Has anyone ever had a problem with XP where USB Thumb Drives are not automatically installed when plugged in? My system here at work installs "USB Mass Storage Device", "Disk Drive", and "Generic Volume" every time I plug my device in. No other computer I use does it. I also get messages saying that the driver has not passed Windows compatability testing. The end result is that it takes about 60 seconds to actually use a thumb drive when plugged in.

Ideas?

 

[jasonlitka]

No one else has had this problem?

 

[Milenko]

do you need admin priveledges? (i don't know for sure, asking in general)

i've had problems where the assigned drive letter conflicts with another mapped drive.

in this case, control panel > administrative tools > computer management > disk management > right click on the USB drive on the right, change drive letter to something not used. see if that works.

 

[jasonlitka]

I don't think you ned admin privs to use a usb drive but in any case, I have them on this system. As to changing the drive letter, unplugging, and then plugging back in, that didn't help. It redetected everything and then just assigned it the lowest unused letter.

 

[hulksterjoe]

whose drive is it and which service packs do you have installed.. that might help us get a better picture

 

[TechLarry]

Yeah, I see this all the time with Novell. Windows doesn't look at Novell Mappings before assigning drive letters and is always giving devices letters that are already in use by Novell.

Obviously, the device doesn't show up.

Fix as discribd by Milenko]do.

-Larry

do you need admin priveledges? (i don't know for sure, asking in general)

i've had problems where the assigned drive letter conflicts with another mapped drive.

in this case, control panel > administrative tools > computer management > disk management > right click on the USB drive on the right, change drive letter to something not used. see if that works.

 

[jasonlitka]

whose drive is it and which service packs do you have installed.. that might help us get a better picture

I'm not sure what you mean by "whose drive is it". If you are asking about the manufacturer, I couldn't say except for one of them. My 1 GB stick is from Sandisk, the remaining are generic sticks (mostly tradeshow promos) ranging from 64MB to 128MB. All exhibit the same problem.

As to service packs, I'm running Windows XP Pro, SP2, all available updates from Microsoft Update have been installed.

Yeah, I see this all the time with Novell. Windows doesn't look at Novell Mappings before assigning drive letters and is always giving devices letters that are already in use by Novell.

Obviously, the device doesn't show up.

Fix as discribd by Milenko]do.

-Larry

It's interesting that you mention Novell. For a while, I was running Novell NetDrive for mapping FTP sites to drive letters. I've since uninstalled that. I can't remember if the problem existed before or not. In any case, the posted fix did not help.