Removable drives appear but don't exist

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SimpleSimon

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#14748 18-Jul-2007 17:09

A friend recently stuck a USB flash drive in my computer to empty it of some pictures. Upon its removal, I noticed that there were four removable drives showing up in windows explorer. They were lettered E,F,G,H. In Device Manager they also show up under USB Mass Storage. I restarted the computer to see if that would get rid of them but it didn't. To make matters worse, when I inserted my thumb drive, it wasn't recognized ( it didn't show up in windows explorer). So now I can't use it in this computer. I know it works because I tried it in another computer. How do I get rid of the removable drives and get my flash drive to work again ?

rscole86

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#78672 18-Jul-2007 17:12

Are those removable drives your card reader slots?

If you can put digital camera cards into your PC/Laptop then that will be what those letters are.

freitasm

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Geekzone

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#78673 18-Jul-2007 17:12

I think this was discussed before, and it was something to do with old drivers installed by DaemonTools, or something similar.

Also, make sure you are not mapping some network drives with the same letters, as this causes problems as well...

SimpleSimon

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#78675 18-Jul-2007 17:25

Thanks guys for the quick response. Yes, the computer does have card reader slots. That makes sense. But why, all of a sudden, is my flash drive not recognized ? It worked numerous times before this incident. I figured it was a driver problem or him removing his drive without "stopping" or "ejecting" it first.

freitasm

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#78677 18-Jul-2007 17:30

Could you try using his card again and using the Stop option this time?

rscole86

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#78678 18-Jul-2007 17:34

Have you tried different USB ports? As each time a "new" USB device is plugged into each port it has install the drivers for that device.

SimpleSimon

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#78682 18-Jul-2007 17:41

I wish I could ! He was just down for the weekend, he lives 2 hours away. Where would the card reader slots show up in Device Manager ? The removable drives show up under "Universal Serial Bus Controllers", "Mass Storage Device".