System will not not assign drive letter

I was working with a friend's XP Pro system and inserted a flash drive into a USB slot. The system recognized the drive..but would not assign a drive letter to it. Is there an iteration or form of XP that might prevent intrusion by not assigning a drive letter to an external device? I went to another similar desktop in the same office and the flash drive was recognized immediately. Other strange (perhaps related) behavior is that I tried to update the system to SP-3 via a CD. I know the CD is good and contains SP-3 but my friend's system wouldn't recognize it. Also it will not download SP-3 from the internet, yet downloads other monthly updates automatically. Comments?

 

Hi Skylane, When you Right click My Computer > Properties > does it show SP2 or SP3? Is it a legit Windows XP Pro? Neil.

 

As I mentioned in the previous post. It is XP Pro. I was trying to upgrade to SP-3 from SP-2

 

Right click My Computer > Manage > Disk Management > and see if it's shown when you plug it in. You can assign a drive letter to it in Disk Management. Can you get data from the USB Flash Drive? Have you tried a System Restore to see if it worked OK an an earlier date? Neil.