I have installed a USB Flash Drive (Imation brand if that matters). All seemed to go well. It correctly appears in Device manager, which assures me in friendly letters 'the device is working properly'.

However it is not visible in Windows Explorer, nor in the Open/Save Dialog boxes of word processors.

Any ideas?

Terry@nz

Hi Terry,

You probably need to partition and format it.

M2

Have a look in 'My Computer' it should show as 'removable drive there.

Old Salt: no, it doesn't appear in 'My Computer' either.

Mechanix2Go: No, I don't think USB Flash Drives need formatting. Anyway I have never done it, and the same Drive works OK in other computers, with the same driver. And in XP, without the extra driver of course.

Terry@nz

Hi - I'm having the same problem with my new Sandisk Micro Cruzer 512K. System doesn't assign a drive letter. I can assign a drive letter manually (right click on My Computer --> manage ----> disk management, then right click on box corresponding to the flash drive and assign a drive letter) - and I can "open" the drive and write to it from there - but it still doesn't show in My Computer.

Have you had any luck in solving your problem? If so, would you be kind enuf to share your good fortune with me? This is driving me crazy!

Thanks

Are you using a lot of network drive mappings? I had the same problem - was using a freebie 64MB flash drive, then plugged in a 512 one to transfer some files over. The new one didn't show, although could open in disk management as above.

Found that the 64 meg drive was allocated the only free drive mapping on the network - the new one took the next logical letter, but that was the same as a network drive so appeared as a network on My computer.

Just stuck to using the larger flash drive and re-naming it with the spare letter using Disk Management - it appeared on My Computer when next I plugged it in.

My experience may not be universal, but I own several USB flash drives of different makes, and none will accept a drive letter assignment higher than G. If drive letters A-G are not available, you might try mapping another drive to a higher letter in order to free an available assignment.

Sorry for the quick post. I described the way I solved the problem, but I just found a more technical explanation on Imation's web site:

This problem occurs if you map a network drive to the first available drive letter following the drive letters for the local volumes and CD/DVD drives. When you install a new device or volume, a software called Mount Manager tries to assign drive letters to the new volumes. But since the software does not recognize mapped drive letters, it assigns the next available local drive letter to the new device. This causes a collision with the existing mapped network drive.

Since the problem is related to your Microsoft operating system, they are your best source for resolving this issue. For more information, click here:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;297694