Usb sticks and windows 7

[ipwatercolours]

my usb memory stick refuses to be recognised on my new w7 laptop. worked perfectly well on my pc xp.

 

[John_VanKirk]

Hello, & Welcome to Tom's Hardware!

Well, that's an interesting problem. Let's assume the USB flash drive is OK, since it worked on you XP computer. Might just doublecheck that on a separate laptop. Remember that the USB ports may be installed upside down from what you are used to, so check on that also, don't force them.

Then on your 'new' Win-7 computer, go to the BIOS by clicking on 'del' at the splash screen, or equivelent, and go to the Integrated Peripherals page. Sometimes all the USB controllers aren't turned on by default.

Check the SouthBridge or PCH USB controller to make sure that is enabled, and if there are secondary chip controllers or USB 3.0 separate chip controllers if they are also 'enabled'. Look down the list at all the USB controllers. Sometimes the MB maker separates out the secondaryd controllers toward the end of the page. If not 'enable' them, and see if your flash drive is recognized

The USB thumb drives are 'plug and play' so it should be recognized right away.

 

[pjmelect]

Insert the memory stick then go to device manager and see if there is a pling against a USB device. If there is delete the USB device remove the memory stick and then refit it.

 

[perzaklie]

I ended up here looking for a solution also. I just bought a new Windows 7 laptop. I have a USB stick that I use often between my XP Pro desktop, a couple of XP laptops, Ubuntu HTPC and even two really old Windows 98 laptops with never a problem. I needed to move a file quickly to my Win 7 laptop and when I plugged in my USB stick, nothing. It did not appear in Computer even when I tried every USB port on the laptop. I came here and read the suggestion and was going to do it then I decided that rather than reboot my laptop, I would try putting it back in my XP Desktop and try the "Safely Remove Hardware" option. I tried it, plugged it into my Win 7 laptop and it instantly recognized my USB stick. Now to qualify this solution. It only applied to a really old Lexar 1GB JumpDrive. Win 7 will not recognized this jump drive unless I do the "Safely Remove Hardware" option when I remove it from my XP machine. My other USB drives seem to work fine with Plug N Play in the Win 7 laptop. I did try this several times just to verify that it happened in every instance and it did. I also tried my other USB drives and they all worked fine with Plug N Play in every instance in which I moved them from XP to Win 7 to XP and back to Win 7. One other thing, all my USB drives are FAT format.

 

[John_VanKirk]

I ended up here looking for a solution also. I just bought a new Windows 7 laptop. I have a USB stick that I use often between my XP Pro desktop, a couple of XP laptops, Ubuntu HTPC and even two really old Windows 98 laptops with never a problem. I needed to move a file quickly to my Win 7 laptop and when I plugged in my USB stick, nothing. It did not appear in Computer even when I tried every USB port on the laptop. I came here and read the suggestion and was going to do it then I decided that rather than reboot my laptop, I would try putting it back in my XP Desktop and try the "Safely Remove Hardware" option. I tried it, plugged it into my Win 7 laptop and it instantly recognized my USB stick. Now to qualify this solution. It only applied to a really old Lexar 1GB JumpDrive. Win 7 will not recognized this jump drive unless I do the "Safely Remove Hardware" option when I remove it from my XP machine. My other USB drives seem to work fine with Plug N Play in the Win 7 laptop. I did try this several times just to verify that it happened in every instance and it did. I also tried my other USB drives and they all worked fine with Plug N Play in every instance in which I moved them from XP to Win 7 to XP and back to Win 7. One other thing, all my USB drives are FAT format.

Hi there,

There is obviously a reason why that one Lexar flashdrive will only be recognized on your new Win-7 computer after using the "safely remove" choice on your older XP computer. It is not very typical. You might check in the Device Manager, clicking on the USB Mass Storage entry near the bottom for this specific flashdrive when it is plugged, click on Properties, then click on the Details tab, and down the list select "Removal Policy", then "Safe Removal Polity" to see if it says "false" or "true". You can't change these items but you might find this specific flashdrive requires "safe removal" to function properly.

You can purchase a new 8 GB flashdrive now for about $14, which I would recommend rather than chance any write caching problems with this one specific stick, format it with FAT-32 and you should be good to go on all your computers.

The other thing you could try, is to copy all the Lexar files to a temp folder on your laptop, reFormat the Lexar flash drive on the new Laptop using the FAT-32 file system, and then copy your files back to it. Might work after that reformatting from your new laptop. Worth a try!

Any concern, just purchase a new recent flash drive so everything is compatable.

hope that is helpful!