I've got a Sandisk Cruzer micro 2.0GB flash drive which isn't working anymore.
The last thing that happened was this:
I gave it to someone at work, who transferred a few files to it on a Windows 2000 machine. She "says" that she ejected it properly (I wasn't there, so I can't verify this) and gave it back to me. I plugged it into my XP machine and it came up with this error:

"One of the USB devices attached to this computer has malfunctioned, and windows does not recognize it. For assistance in solving this problem, click this message."
It shows up as an "unknown device"

I've tried plugging the drive into a dozen different machines, with XP, 2000 and even a couple of Macs running OSX. The machines recognize that the drive has been plugged in, but it doesn't show up anywhere.

I went to disk management, to see if I could find the drive and assign it a letter, but it doesn't show up there either.

So I guess I'm out of ideas, and I don't really want to spend a fortune sending it to a data recovery specialist.

One friend suggested putting it in the freezer for 15 minutes! Haven't tried that yet.

Now I don't care about the drive itself, but I would really like to recover the data on it. I should have backed it up more often!

If anyone has any suggestions, I'd greatly appreciate it.

There are a few programs out there that claim to recover data. Might search for them, free to commercial.

See also maybe a knoppix disk or other live cd and load raw or try to view it raw. Even barts/ubcd4win has unstoppable copier.

I doubt you will get it to work however. Seems like the controller is blown. The last choice is to get an exact copy and resolder the memory chip on to the new on.

I read it wrong and answer it wrong too. So get off my case you peanut.