Weird Usb Problem

[TCH-Bruce]

I have a Sony RX-755 desktop computer I use at work. It has 4 USB (1.1) ports on it.

 

Here's the weird thing that's happening. I have a USB 2.0 and USB 1.1 flash drive. When I insert the USB 1.1 flash drive Windows XP recognizes it and assigns it a drive letter and I can use it.

 

When I insert the USB 2.0 drive into it Windows XP recognizes it as a 2.0 device and a balloon pops up telling me that a high speed device was detected but it would function at a slower rate because the ports are not 2.0.

 

This is all fine with one exception. It never assigns a drive letter and I have no way to access it.

 

Any ideas as to why? I've used the same 2.0 USB drive on a Windows 98 machine with the proper drivers. Also used it on a Windows 2000 machine with 1.1 ports.

 

I also tried 3 other USB 2.0 drives and they all get detected but no drive letter is assigned. Different manufacturers too. The machine is XP with SP1 installed.

 

I'm stumped.

[Madmanmcp]

Try and manually adding the letter from these instructions.

 

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=307844

[TCH-Bruce]

Thanks Bob, I'll give that a try.

[Samrc]

Bruce, I had that problem on my NETWORKED computer, but not on the standalone machine at home.

 

More than half the time, the usb key I had inserted WAS available on the networked machine, but did not appear so in the explorer window.

 

When I double clicked one of the other drives (not my c,d or f, since they are fixed) the data would appear in the window. For example, in the explorer window g drive would indicate that that it was connected to the "company" folder on my server. But when I double clicked it, the data matched the data in my usb key so I was able to transfer to and from the key. Got used to it after a while and stopped asking why. (It is windows afterall)

 

-Samantha

[Madmanmcp]

Ok, not sure why you haven't yet but maybe its time. I would suggest you bite the bullet and upgrade to SP2. There were several fixes in SP2 for problems with USB.

 

Here is the list of fixes.

 

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...kb;en-us;811113

[Samrc]

My office machine DID get the SP2 and still had USB issues.

In the process of getting new machine for office.

 

-Samantha

[TCH-Bruce]

Ok, not sure why you haven't yet but maybe its time. I would suggest you bite the bullet and upgrade to SP2.

Well, I'm lazy I guess!

 

Actually, I've been meaning to upgrade but just haven't had the time.

[Madmanmcp]

Actually, I've been meaning to upgrade but just haven't had the time.

 

There are valid reasons for not upgrading. SP2 clobbered some legacy programs and some businesses were stuck with the decision of not upgrading or rewriting those programs.

 

But that doesn't appear to be your case

 

So did you try the manual assign. I have a feeling this will be a temp fix, as soon as you reboot you will lose the letter again.

[TCH-Bruce]

No, I am in the middle of two programming projects and haven't had a chance to try. Doing tech support and programming is eating up all my time.

[TCH-Bruce]

Bob, I had a chance to try the drive assignment. That worked and thanks.

 

It was similar to what Samantha said happened to her. It assigned drive "F" to the USB drive which was already assigned to a network drive. Once I used the disk management feature to tell it to use "L" everything worked.

 

When I clicked on my "F" drive in Windows Explorer it brought up my networked drive not the USB drive.

 

So all is well and thanks again.

[Madmanmcp]

Welcome Bruce, glad I could help.