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Just bought 2 IBM ThinkPad A31 Laptops with Win 2k Pro-SP2 for small office use. I connected a Memorex thumb drive into the USB port of one machine (call it machine A). It read it fine. After removing it I put it in the other machine (call it machine B) which had previously had no USB problems-could read and write to any of 4 storage devices I'd previously connected to it. But after connecting the thumb drive from machine A to Machine B, Machine B can no longer access any storage device at all. The system is treating them like they were a floppy or CD-ROM drive. I can see them in My Computer, and in Device Manager but when I click on them in My computer, I get an error message: "Please insert a disk in drive E". Stranger still is that if I reboot with the USB device connected, then the system can access the files. Anybody ever hear of this one? <help> please! :sad: TIA

Neal

hi

Can you make sure that you have properly assigned a drive letter to the thumb drive in:

right click on "My Computer" > manage > Disk Management.

Hi Hengis

Yes the drive letter assignment is right. I even tried assigning another drive letter to it last nite but no luck. Still couldn't read it.

Try going in to your Device manager and removing all of the human interface devices one by one - when they have been removed, make sure that you don't remove you mouse and kb (if they are usb) - unplug the thumb drive, reboot and re-insert the drive when you are back in windows and let is be re-installed automatically.

The flash card isn't listed in Human Interface Devices. It's in Universal Serial Bus Controllers. If I try to uninstall it while it's connected, Device Manager crashes then I get a Found New Hardware error message that reads "An error occurred during the installation of the device. The data is invalid" It's the old catch 22. If I disconnect the device first, then it's not listed in USB Controllers. So I can't uninstall it.

While browsing my files I came across a db file in Documents & Settings\Administrator\Application Data\Microsoft\Media Index with the same date and time that problem began. I overwrote it with an earlier file I had backed up, rebooted and now I'm back in business. Feels great!

Glad to hear your problem is solved Neal!
Thanks for letting us know.
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Marked as resolved.

Bluefish