XP Pro doesnt recognize USB flash drive

[rubberman]

XP pro doesnt recognize my USB flash drive. neither the front or rear ports. My work computer and the PS3 both find it and works fine. POrts are fine cause my mouse and printer and scanner work on them. any ideas?

[aedipuss]

might need sp1 and/or sp2?

[johns0]

Windows might have recognized the usb device as an unknown device,check in control panel/system/hardware/device manager and check in view/show hidden devices for any errors.

[rubberman]

in device manager it shows 'unknown device' and shows no driver installed for this device but if i go to install device it says it cant find a better driver than the one its using.

[Ai Haibara]

Check the manufacturer's website. They may have drivers for the drive, there. Did the drive come with any discs?

[johns0]

Usb flash drives dont require extra drivers,windows should install generic hdd drivers for it,being unknown device means windows has screwed up and wont properly assign drivers,try and uninstall from device manager and unplug and replug,might have to do it a few times.

[Ai Haibara]

I've heard of rare cases where USB flash drives might require drivers under XP, for some of the more rare or 'exotic' types. It depends on the device, really. rubberman, what flash drive are you trying to use?

[gll99]

In most cases removing all usb drivers in the device manager and rebooting and then letting xp find them again works well.

If this is a p3 as in your specs then you may have a usb 1.1 onboard controller and the usb drive is probably 2.0. It still might work but more slowly. Some have reported problems with the SIS 7001 pci to usb drivers. If those are the ones showing in your device manager then you may have to override them by right clicking on the entry and saying you want to update the drivers, choose "no not this time" to windows searching, then select "install from list or specific location", then "don't search I'll choose the driver", then choose the standard usb host controller.

If you are using a pci 2.0 add on card, even though it may say there are no conflicts, check to see which io interrupts are being used. In the device manager use "view" and "resources by type" then check the interrupt request (IRQ) and see if anything else is using the same IRQ. If so you may have to move the card to another slot. In xp IRQ are shared between some pci slots and even the video even if it's agp.

A snapshot of the usb controllers showing in the device manager would be helpful.

[kimco52]

I have a similar problem. I don't know what is going on. I have two rear USB connectors and two in the front. I leave the two rear ones plugged in all the time to a scanner and a webcam. I change the front ones to what I want to use, whether it is a film (slide) scanner, USB disk drive card, HP photo printer, etc.

The problem is that a given device will work on one connector but not the other. I would think it should recognize a device on either connector but it does not. I don't know why.

Edit....
To further clarify, some devices work on one connector (1) and some work on the other connector (2). Moving them to the other connector comes up with a device not recognized. In other words, it appears that a given device will only be recognized on only one of the four connectors but not the others. All connectors work for some devices. It is as if the driver is loaded for only one connectore for a given device.

I know. It sounds strange.

[johns0]

The problem with swapping out connectors to front usb a lot causes loose contacts in the usb housing after awhile,i have the same problem and tightening the contacts helps.

[oldandinthe way]

How big is the flash drive?

I remember some issues may exist with 4gb and larger flash drives.