External device stops being recognized

Topic

New Reply

After installing Win 7 I plugged my Amazon Kindle in for the first time. It installed but when I opened the removable “disk” it said it was totally empty. There are supposed to be folders predefined. After unplugging it every subsequent attempt results in the drive not being displayed. I used the Device Manager to delete the Amazon Kindle drive from the Disk drives list and now it won’t reinstall when I plug it in. I get a sound when plugging it in and unplugging it. The Safely Remove Hardware applet lists “Eject Amazon Kindle” but does not list a drive.

What can I try to get this working?

Reply | Quote

Replies

Have similar problem with HP Pocket Drive. I regularly get USB device not recognized error. If I reboot, the Pocket Drive is recognized. Have tried uninstalling all USB controllers and rebooting but that has not cured the problem. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Edit: Contacted Hp Support and went through the “routine”. The short story for me may be the number of USB devices I have plugged-in. So am trying Pocket Drive with only 2 other devices as a test. Will post results in a day or two.

Reply | Quote

Have similar problem with HP Pocket Drive. I regularly get USB device not recognized error. If I reboot, the Pocket Drive is recognized. Have tried uninstalling all USB controllers and rebooting but that has not cured the problem. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Edit: Contacted Hp Support and went through the “routine”. The short story for me may be the number of USB devices I have plugged-in. So am trying Pocket Drive with only 2 other devices as a test. Will post results in a day or two.

Even with only 2 USB devices attached my Pocket Drive lost its connection. On a hunch, I moved the printer cable attached to a front USB port to another port and voila! the Pocket Drive has remained connected for several days now. Don’t ask me why!!!!!!!!!

Reply | Quote

I had the same problem with an Iogear 1TB USB drive. Windows loaded the drivers and all was fine. I accessed the drive and was working along when a notification popped up and said the drive failed to install correctly. I move the drive to an XP machine and it worked just fine. What was interesting was I had a second Iogear drive – 320 GB attached to the Windows 7 machine and it has had no problems. I have updated the motherboard BIOS, usb drivers, and chipset drivers for Windows 7. I’m thinking this could be a Win 7 glitch. Anyone have any suggestions??

Reply | Quote

Same problem.
Various types of USB external drive, various sizes all hang up caclulating space remaining when copying and make Windows explorer go “not responding”. Also make system unstable with not responding issues on Windows Explorer and others.

W7 Ultimate 64 bit.
Dell XPS 730X
6GB Ram
300GB 10K RPM Velociraptor boot drive.
Clean W7 Install.

Had same issues in Vista 64 Ultimate.
Can’t they ever fix this issue!!

Reply | Quote

So… Does anyone have a USB drive that works properly with Windows 7? Is this a general error?

Reply | Quote

Yes, I have several that works on XP, Vista and Windows 7 machines, some are even many years old. I have a 256 Meg that works, and they have not been in production for some time.

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

Reply | Quote

Yes, I have several that works on XP, Vista and Windows 7 machines, some are even many years old. I have a 256 Meg that works, and they have not been in production for some time.

It works every time? It works when you plug it in after booting? Can you see its contents in Explorer?

Reply | Quote

Yes, to all above.

But I normally do NOT boot up with any thumb drives in.

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

Reply | Quote

I also have no problems seeing USB drives in Windows 7, both external hard disk drives and Flash drives. One thing you might want to do is open the Folder Options applet in Control Panel, click on the view tab, and uncheck “Hide empty drives in the computer folder”. I do note that my DVD drive doesn’t display in windows Explorer unless there is a disk in it even though the preceeding option is unchecked.

Jerry

Reply | Quote

I also have no problems seeing USB drives in Windows 7, both external hard disk drives and Flash drives. One thing you might want to do is open the Folder Options applet in Control Panel, click on the view tab, and uncheck “Hide empty drives in the computer folder”. I do note that my DVD drive doesn’t display in windows Explorer unless there is a disk in it even though the preceeding option is unchecked.

Jerry

It displays but takes minutes to do so. Its contents show as empty and I can’t copy anything to it though.

Reply | Quote

I have had no problems either with any usb devices and I have several different kinds of external drives (all home created) and flash drives. None of my external drives draw power from the usb cable, they all have their own power supplies if that might make a difference. I have a Gigabyte motherboard and have installed no motherboard drivers, just what came with Win7 Home Premium.

Reply | Quote

If your USB drive has a extra “Power” connector, you might try that. I have had one long time ago I need the extra power one one certain computer.

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

Reply | Quote

Okay I MAY have stumbled on a fix or help for USB drives. I went to the power options > edit plan settings and clicked on the “change advanced power settings”. In that box I scrolled down to USB settings, expand the + and select USB selective suspend settings. I disables the plugged in setting and this seems to have helped. So far so good – no issues with dropped connections.

Reply | Quote

Okay I MAY have stumbled on a fix or help for USB drives. I went to the power options > edit plan settings and clicked on the “change advanced power settings”. In that box I scrolled down to USB settings, expand the + and select USB selective suspend settings. I disables the plugged in setting and this seems to have helped. So far so good – no issues with dropped connections.

I have an issue with two laptops regarding USB. One is a brand new Dell (Win7 Home Premium factory installed) and the other is a Sony Vaio (factory Vista, but I wiped out and installed Win7 Ultimate), but the same issue on both: I will get “unrecognized USB device” errors on occasion. Usually, unplugging everything including AC power, removing the battery and allowing it to sit for several minutes will reset everything, but I have had to actually boot in safe mode and remove the unrecognized devices then reboot to get them to work again as well.

I just tried this trick you suggest…..thanks! I will likely create a new thread on this as well. I can’t be the only one who has had it.

Reply | Quote

I have an issue with two laptops regarding USB. One is a brand new Dell (Win7 Home Premium factory installed) and the other is a Sony Vaio (factory Vista, but I wiped out and installed Win7 Ultimate), but the same issue on both: I will get “unrecognized USB device” errors on occasion. Usually, unplugging everything including AC power, removing the battery and allowing it to sit for several minutes will reset everything, but I have had to actually boot in safe mode and remove the unrecognized devices then reboot to get them to work again as well.

I just tried this trick you suggest…..thanks! I will likely create a new thread on this as well. I can’t be the only one who has had it.

The USB issue seems to be limited to the 64-bit version of Windows 7 with more than 4GB of memory installed. I originally discovered this when I increased memory to 20GB. The fix I recommended seems to work for my drives that are under 1TB. Anything over 1TB it will not recognize on a consistent basis – actually if it does it wants to format the drive. I have no problem with drives that are under 500GB. Not sure what the issue is other that Microsoft needs to recognize this and offer a fix better than disabling memory above 4GB.

Reply | Quote

The USB issue seems to be limited to the 64-bit version of Windows 7 with more than 4GB of memory installed. I originally discovered this when I increased memory to 20GB. The fix I recommended seems to work for my drives that are under 1TB. Anything over 1TB it will not recognize on a consistent basis – actually if it does it wants to format the drive. I have no problem with drives that are under 500GB. Not sure what the issue is other that Microsoft needs to recognize this and offer a fix better than disabling memory above 4GB.

That certainly isn’t my problem as I have 4GB and Win 7-32 and my Kindle is much smaller than 1TB.

Reply | Quote

Had this problem with a 1Tb Maxtor hard drive. Totally unpredictable when it would be seen or not seen by Windows. Elsewhere I’ve seen it suggested this is a known problem with Maxtor and/or it is an nvidia driver problem.

In the end this problem was so pervasive I installed an extra internal 1Tb drive which is fine. Not ideal but there comes a time when several hours of plugging/unplugging/checking drivers etc is more costly in time than getting a replacement drive.

Reply | Quote

I’ve now upgraded my laptop to Windows 7 and was able to plug my Kindle in successfully. That proves it isn’t a device or cable issue. It still fails on my desktop system. I’ve tried removing the driver without success. My power settings are as suggested above.

Reply | Quote

You could try going into Disk Management (Start > Run > diskmgmt.msc) and see if the drive shows up there (and has a drive letter attached to it).

If that doesn’t work, I’d uninstall the Kindle software, unplug the Kindle from your PC and then do the following:

1) Click Start > Run, then type cmd. You should see the icon appear in the Start menu.

2) Right-click the icon and select “Run as Administrator”

3) In the command prompt, type the following commands:
set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1
cd&systemRoot%System32
start devmgmt.msc

4) If you find the Kindle in this list now, right-click it and select “Uninstall”

This trick also works when you plug a device in right away that usually requires the driver software to be installed beforehand (HP printers, for example).

Reply | Quote

You could try going into Disk Management (Start > Run > diskmgmt.msc) and see if the drive shows up there (and has a drive letter attached to it).

If that doesn’t work, I’d uninstall the Kindle software, unplug the Kindle from your PC and then do the following:

1) Click Start > Run, then type cmd. You should see the icon appear in the Start menu.

2) Right-click the icon and select “Run as Administrator”

3) In the command prompt, type the following commands:
set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1
cd&systemRoot%System32
start devmgmt.msc

4) If you find the Kindle in this list now, right-click it and select “Uninstall”

This trick also works when you plug a device in right away that usually requires the driver software to be installed beforehand (HP printers, for example).

The drive shows up after the Kindle has been plugged-in for several minutes. Clicking on the drive shows a totally empty root directory and trying to copy to it fails.

There is no Kindle software that installs on Windows. I have uninstalled/rediscovered/reinstalled the driver without success.

Reply | Quote

The drive shows up after the Kindle has been plugged-in for several minutes. Clicking on the drive shows a totally empty root directory and trying to copy to it fails.

There is no Kindle software that installs on Windows. I have uninstalled/rediscovered/reinstalled the driver without success.

When I have a chance I’ll compare the Registry entries for the Kindle between by desktop and laptop.

Reply | Quote