USB drives not showing in My Computer

Similar Problem with USB, No Solutions Working

I have a similar problem. Everything worked fine untill a blue screen during login which never let me get past typing in my password at the welcome screen, I used my WinXP CD to repair Windows, which fixed my blue screen and a number of smaller bugs which I didn't mind.

However, now when I plug in my USB key, iPod Shuffle and even memory cards into the built in card reader, none of them appear in My Computer.

Manually assigning drive letters from Disk Management allows me to access them from the address bar, but they still don't appear in My Computer. Restarts remove the manually assigned drive letters and I have to access Disk Management again and re-assign them after a restart. I've tried TweakUI and removing USB Root Hub from Device Manager, unregistering and registering dll files, but nothing works.

I'm running WinXP Home Ed., SP2 on an HP Pavilion dv1000 series laptop.

 

It wasn't a clean install using a retail purchased WinXP cd. I used the HP disks to do the recovery. (I don't own any other WinXP cds)

 

Plugging in a pen drive results in it appearing in both Disk Management and Device Manager. I tried to uninstall the pen drive through Device Manager, rebooting and re-inserting the pen drive but that didn't work either.

 

No Roxio programs were ever installed, my HP came with Sonic RecordNow! and I switched to Nero after buying an external DVD burner. External DVD burner functions normally, it connects through a firewire connection. Everything worked perfectly untill the WinXP recovery. I have a network drive with is currently assigned drive letter Z. All software installed before the recovery work fine, seems like this only affects anything plugged in to my USB ports or my card reader.

 

To update the situation, I ran a BIOS flash (found on HP website). All drivers are up to date (also from HP website). Still not working.

 

I would boot in Safe Mode, go to Device Manager and uninstall the controllers listed under IDE (ATA) Controllers, USB Controllers and if you think so, the IEEE (firewire) Controllers.

You have installed the latest drivers so they will all be automatically reinstalled when you reboot.

Matt

 

thank you for suggestions. however, have failed to produce results.

 

Removing drive Z did nothing.

 

Try running chkdsk (Error Checking) on your harddrive.

There should be diagnostics utilities at the HP website for drives and USB.

You probably don't have the option to do a repair or reinstall of Windows, so if you look like reformatting, make certain that none of those drives are connected at the time or any other added hardware. Run the install with the "factory" setup.

Try searching the HP forums
http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/bizsupport/categoryhome.do?categoryId=405
or asking there.

Matt
Edit: Check through the troubleshooting here:
http://www.usbman.com/
Edit2: If you have drivers or software installed for those devices or other USB devices such as printers, you may need to uninstall them until you get the problem identified.