When the machine is already booted up, and I plug in a USB drive device (thumbdrive, Digital Camera), The machine will recognize them as USB Storage Devices, but doesn't assign a drive letter, and the drive/camera ia inaccessible (in the device manager, I have tried assigning them a drive letter, and they are still not available to Windows.) If I boot the machine with these already plugged in (and turned on, in the case of the camera), they are recognized and given drive letters, rendering them accessible.

I've been working on PCs a long time, and this is a first for me. It is going to be thoroughly inconvenient for the user to reboot each time she needs to access the camera or thumbdrive. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks.

Solved!

Uninstalled the customer's old Kodak EasyShare crap, and, like magic, the drives get assigned a drive letter -- go figure.

Hope this helps someone else.

Later,

kewl

I helped a guy a few years ago and the key was losing some "photo" crap.

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If at first you don't succeed, you're about average.

M2