Bloody pen drive thingy won't work..........

[Nelly]

Please help,
I have just purchased a new laptop. It's faster, stronger, better (de de de deeeee da da da da da daaaaa The bionc laptop) sorry side tracked there. Wasn't Steve Austin a great show?

Anyway i have a 4Gb pen drive with my life on it. Seriously my degree work and all of the lectures and teaching material that I use. I have plugged it in and it loads the driver device just fine. When I go to my computer it's not visible. I am not in any way shape or form a computer buff. I am using Vista 32 bit with SP1. It worked fine in my old vista laptop, how can I sort this out?

Screen shots would be good as I am crap at the technical stuff.
Cheers

Nelly:thumbup:

 

[Wavex]

Should work without a problem unless:

1) you need to reboot for the USB driver to work (should not, but reboot anyway),
2) your USB stick is dead,
3) the USB driver that Vista installed is wrong (Vista is pretty good with that though)
4) your laptop is not getting the full 12V required for USB... is it plugged on the wall power or just battery?

Did you reboot?
Did you try another USB stick? does it work?
Do you have other USB plugs on your laptop? try another one.

Let us know your findings

 

[Wavex]

PS: don't keep all your critical data on a USB stick without backing it up somewhere!!!

 

[Wavex]

You may also use Windows Explorer (one of the only great things about windows) and you should see all your drives under "My Computer"... if not hit F5 to refresh and see if it appears...

 

[Moses195]

When you first plug it in you say the driver loads. look under 'start', 'computer' and see if you have another drive listed.prob. 'e' or 'f'.

 

[trougnouf]

Try booting your computer with a linux liveCD ( Ubuntu Home Page | Ubuntu ). If it doesn't work then nothing else will, and it will at least tell you what is wrong with it.

 

[Nelly]

Thanks David,

Should work without a problem unless:

1) you need to reboot for the USB driver to work (should not, but reboot anyway), How do you do that? Actually I just realised how daft that question was. tried it and it didn't work
2) your USB stick is dead,No its worked well previously and not old.
3) the USB driver that Vista installed is wrong (Vista is pretty good with that though)Probably
4) your laptop is not getting the full 12V required for USB... is it plugged on the wall power or just battery?Plugged in to mains
F5 didn't wotk nor did the other three USB ports.

Did you reboot?
Did you try another USB stick? does it work?
Do you have other USB plugs on your laptop? try another one.

Let us know your findings

 

[Nelly]

Try booting your computer with a linux liveCD ( Ubuntu Home Page | Ubuntu ). If it doesn't work then nothing else will, and it will at least tell you what is wrong with it.

Thanks for that, I have only had this laptop running for two hours and would like to find a windows solution prior to your suggestion.

Nelly

 

[sxty8goats]

Reboot means "Shut down and re-start the computer"

Check it in another computer. Just because it did work and is fairly new, it may be dead. Always back up critical info in multiple places.

Open "My Computer" when it is not plugged in, Plug it in and see if a new drive letter pops up. Sometimes Windows calls it something unique, sometimes it just gives it a drive letter. It may be there but just named something you are not used to seeing.

 

[Nelly]

Reboot means "Shut down and re-start the computer"

Check it in another computer. Just because it did work and is fairly new, it may be dead. Always back up critical info in multiple places.

Open "My Computer" when it is not plugged in, Plug it in and see if a new drive letter pops up. Sometimes Windows calls it something unique, sometimes it just gives it a drive letter. It may be there but just named something you are not used to seeing.

Thanks mate,

I have tried that and I can only see my wireless conection and my phone.
I edited my re-boot query, I just had a thick moment.
I now fully understand the reason why data is backed up, bollocks.

Nelly

 

[sxty8goats]

Thanks mate,

I have tried that and I can only see my wireless conection and my phone.
I edited my re-boot query, I just had a thick moment.
I now fully understand the reason why data is backed up, bollocks.

Nelly

Vista can be overly cautious. I had a friend over with a Vista notebook. It wouldn't even acknowledge my wireless network existed. Being an XP guy I fought with it for an hour or so before I gave up. If I plunged her in with a physical connection she had no problem getting online but couldn't see the drives on my shared network. After that I decided not to 'upgrade' to Vista.

Point is, check your stick on another computer. There is a good chance it is fine but Vista doesn't like it.

 

[Fz6Sa]

Please help,
I have just purchased a new laptop. It's faster, stronger, better (de de de deeeee da da da da da daaaaa The bionc laptop) sorry side tracked there. Wasn't Steve Austin a great show?

Anyway i have a 4Gb pen drive with my life on it. Seriously my degree work and all of the lectures and teaching material that I use. I have plugged it in and it loads the driver device just fine. When I go to my computer it's not visible. I am not in any way shape or form a computer buff. I am using Vista 32 bit with SP1. It worked fine in my old vista laptop, how can I sort this out?

Screen shots would be good as I am crap at the technical stuff.
Cheers

Nelly:thumbup:

Could be a case of drive-letter mixup. (That the USB-pen is trying to get the same drive letter as an existing drive).
To test if this is the case do the following:
In Controlpanel, select "Administrative Tools"
Now select "Computer Management" (Select continue if you get a warning here).
Now select "Disk Management".
Check if you can see the USB-pen drive in the "Computer Management" middle section now.

(The arrow points to a 8Gb USB pen I inserted in my PC)

If you can, right click the USB drive, select "Change Drive letter and Paths", and assign a free drive letter to the pen drive. Now select OK, and you will see the pen drive in My computer.

 

[Humperdinkel]

You could always throw it at Michael Clarke mate i reckon he could smash a century of info out of it :rof:

 

[fast blue one]

If you still have your old computer you could laod up and e-mail it to yourself as well as copying it to CD.
That way you can still get to the info.

 

[grommit]

I would defo check the drive in your old computer to ascertain if it is still readable. If not you might need to look at recovery. Plenty of s/w out there to do that.

Just for future reference you should make sure that you have un-mounted the drive before pulling it from the computer. You might be ok 999/1000 but that one time a delayed write may leave it corrupted.

As others have said you should keep more than one copy of data that is vital. Also you should keep it at another physical location. You may have 10 backups in the cupboard but if your house burns down then they amount too nothing.

 

[alanrim]

Vista laptops by default usually go to sleep instead of shutting down.

Try shutting the laptop down properly, press the Windows Start button, you will see the soft "power button" bottom right, with a little arrow to the very right. Click the arrow then select shutdown from the options.

 

[Raid The Revenge]

One time I had trouble getting my stuff to work, so I checked the brand name of the tool and searched for it on the Internet.

If you look around, you'll find downloads that will update everything and enable the device to work. Give me a PM if you need help.

 

[necrotimus]

I assume that Vista has a way to add new hardware... typically under control panel... try running a check through there and see if that finds it...

also as the poster above says try searching for information by the manufacturer of the drive... sometimes they load some proprietary software on them that trys to boot

 

[Nelly]

Vista can be overly cautious. I had a friend over with a Vista notebook. It wouldn't even acknowledge my wireless network existed. Being an XP guy I fought with it for an hour or so before I gave up. If I plunged her in with a physical connection she had no problem getting online but couldn't see the drives on my shared network. After that I decided not to 'upgrade' to Vista.

Point is, check your stick on another computer. There is a good chance it is fine but Vista doesn't like it.

Stick works on my older vista PC. I am upgrading to windows 7 in the fall. I wonder if this will resolve the Vista gremlins?

Nelly

 

[Nelly]

Could be a case of drive-letter mixup. (That the USB-pen is trying to get the same drive letter as an existing drive).
To test if this is the case do the following:
In Controlpanel, select "Administrative Tools"
Now select "Computer Management" (Select continue if you get a warning here).
Now select "Disk Management".
Check if you can see the USB-pen drive in the "Computer Management" middle section now.

(The arrow points to a 8Gb USB pen I inserted in my PC)

If you can, right click the USB drive, select "Change Drive letter and Paths", and assign a free drive letter to the pen drive. Now select OK, and you will see the pen drive in My computer.

Thanks Mate,

That’s what the IT guys did at work once. They did it remotely so I didn't know how to get in. I have tried your solution and Bingo. I have renamed the driver: Z

Thanks to you all for your valid input. My life is back on track, promotions secured, classes taught, ego's inflated. Not bad for a bike forum.

Nelly