No drive assigned to portable device

On inserting my memory stick into the USB port, the appropriate messages and icon appear on the taskbar, but there is no drive assigned to it in My Computer, and I cannot read any portable device.
I've just had a new motherboard and processor fitted to my Mesh PC, but no change to the XP operating system.

 

Yes they have.
I've taken it back to the place computer centre where they installed the new motherboard and CPU yesterday, and they are suggesting I reload Windows, which I may have to do, but it seems like a sledgehammer to crack a nut, and I'm looking for other ways to put this right. All other applications, seem to work just fine. Device Manager and Disk Management report that the drive is healthy, but nothing appears in "My Computer" and I cannot access the drive via Command prompt (Run: f:/)

 

I assigned a drive letter, but it still does not see it.

In Device Manager under USB Controllers there are five entries "USB Root Hub" and four entries "VIA Rev 5 or later USB Universal Host Controller" and one entry "VIA USB Enhanced Host Controller ". Are these the ones I should delete before a reboot?

 

Well now that was very odd indeed.
I deleted all nine devices that appeared under USB Universla Host Controllers in Device Manager as suggested, and as I deleted the last one a blue screen appeared which conducted an impromptu memory test which seemed ok. I then rebooted and all nine devices re-installed themselves.
I don't recollect how many there used to be before this problem occured but it does seem rather a lot.
I use a camera, a flash-drive and an MP3 player which it sees as a flash drive.

 

Same as before.
When I plug in a device, it sees it on the taskbar with the usual "Detect New Hardware" message the first time I insert it.
In disk Management it recognises that it's a Kingston Flash-drive and that it's 256MB and "Healthy" but still does not see it in "My Computer" so still no access to it.
I can't think why I would have nine USB installations...my keyboard and mouse are not connected via USB ports. I have two flash-drives and a camera.
As often as not, before this problem started, the computer would also automatically open the folder of the device.

 

OK. some limited progress made...
The main thing is that I now know that I can access files on any of my portable devices which was my main objective, but by a very tedious route.

Each time I plug in any device, I assign it a drive letter through Disk Management which I already knew and is suggested throughout the advice on this problem. However, that did not help at first because the drive was then still not visible in My Computer.

However, I have discovered that it IS visible on either Internet Explorer by typing the drive letter in the address bar or in good old EXPLORER.EXE where lo and behold I can actually see my files, and can save files to the devices. (This begs the question: Why are they visible in Explorer but not in My Computer?)

There is a downside in that the assigning of a drive letter is one-time-only event. If I unplug the device and plug it in again a little later, without having rebooted, although the letter still appears in the list of drives, if I click on it then it cannot see it and I have to add a new letter to the same device in order to be able to see the files on it.

Rebooting the PC then flushes out any assigned drives, so it means I have to assign a drive letter each time I want to use any device.
Leaving a device in the USB port without rebooting is obviously the only way I'll get continuous access to the material on it.

I would be reluctant to mark this as "solved" because it seems to be that the nature of the problem is no more to do with the permanent recognition of the portable devices, possibly somewhere in the bowels of the registry. I tried John Will's fix but that didn't seem to work.

By the way, do you think I should have posted this in the "Hardware" forum?

 

Curiously, in Device Manager I find "USB Disk Pro USB Device" listed under Floppy Disk Drives. Is this normal?
I just wonder if that might have any bearing on why no devices can be seen in My Computer..

 

I'm equally puzzled.
Even more bizarre is that I have just this minute checked again and these references to a USB device are no longer in the Floppy Disk Drives area..(!) so I'm not sure what is going on...or whether it has any bearing on the wider problem.
If information concerning portable devices is for some reason going to the wrong place in Device Manager then this might account for their invisibility in My Computer. However, in Disk Drives my portable device is perfectly and accurately described.

 

My mistake. The device is still listed (twice) in the Floppy disk Drive entry of Device Manager. When I looked more recently I did not have the option Show Hidden Devices checked. Now it's checked again ,there are those two entries for USB Disk Pro, whatever that is. I read the Pdf file you hyperlinked, and appreciate that there is a Floppy and HD version, but still cannot figure what they are doing there

 

Yes I've got another one right here.
I plugged it in and it went through all the right messages on the taskbar ie "Found New Hardware ", etc., and correctly identified the device, then finished up by announcing that the device was installed and working properly, or words to that effect,...but still no show in My Computer. That's the only bit of the procedure that does not happen as it used to do. It's baffling.

I've just used "TweakUI" to map out all the drives on the PC. All those in use have a tick. Each of the others has a tick and a red question mark.

 

I feel a bit bad about registering just to reply to this thread but I have suffered the identical problem.

I had an Aopen EY855 Pentium M machine and upgraded to a dual-core computer based on the Asrock 775i65G mainboard based on the Intel 865 chipset. I got this because it was cheap, microATX, took all my current components without an upgrade and supported Conroe. I initially had a Pentium D 805 in there and now a Core 2 Duo E6300. Either way round the problem still remains.

When I installed all my old components from the Aopen machine in there I was forced to repair Windows to get it to boot. Everything worked as normal, bar the USB ports identical to the original poster's problem. Memory sticks (of any kind, I tried 5), iPods, memory card readers and portable hard disks can be seen and installed but are never assigned a drive letter, even if I force it in Computer Management. I uninstalled all the USB hubs (in device manager)and then one memory stick I plugged in worked after the reboot, and now nothing, not even the same stick.

I don't really want to reinstall Windows from scratch, because clearly, repairing it has done nothing (I tried that again as well). I have tried all 14 ports in my machine and none want to play ball, even the ones on the PCI VIA-based USB2 controller I installed or my keyboard. Like I said, all other USB devices work as expected. I am pretty good with PC hardware but this one has me stumped - totally.

 

So you cannot get any access at all to your portable devices?

By the devious route described I can get access to my devices, but there is something that is preventing the assigned drives to "stick ".
I've scoured various forums for about ten days now, and can't find any reference to exactly this set of circumstances.

In Computer Management I note that there is a "Recovery" partition (FAT32) that always appears which is over 2GB I don't know if this has any bearing on the issue, or whether this is quite normal.