USB Flash drive not appearing in My Computer or Windows Ex..

TweakUI did not help this problem.

But I did find a solution:
New symptom found: The USB drive was visible when the computer was in safe
mode.

Solution:
At this point I had to assume that there was some process running on the
computer that was interfering with the USB Drive, so I took the following
steps:

1. In safe mode, I hit cntrl-alt-del and viewed the running processes.
Since the USB drive was working, I wrote down the running processes as a
"safe list." The safe list were the processes that did not prevent the USB
drive from appearing in My Computer and Explorer.
2. Reboot the machine normally.
3. Plug in the USB drive. Hit cntrl-alt-del and view the running processes.
Now there are many more processes running than before, but many can be ruled
out be already being on the safe list. Make a list of the remaining
processes. I am going to call this list "unknown process."
4. Since I had already determined that the CD/DVD burning software, virus
scan, security software, and dvd players were not the culprits, I stopped
the software, noted which processes disappeared from the process table then
moved the process from the unknown list to the safe list. If you are trying
to solve this on your own computer, you will want to verify that these
programs are not the culprits before moving them to the safe list. After you
stop each program, you can verify by unplugging then plugging in the usb
drive to see if the problem continues.
6. I then continued by going to the task bar and stopped a single program,
noted which process disappeared from the table, and uplugged then plugged in
the USB drive to see if it works. If it did not work, I repeated this
process on the next item running in the task bar.
7. My problem happened to be the process apdproxy.exe, which is the photo
downloader for Adobe Photoshop Album Starter Edition, but rundll32.exe was
the problem for the folks at:
http://www.computing.net/windowsxp/wwwboard/forum/126083.html
8. I then prevented this process from starting with the computer by
removing the line about that process from this location in the registry
HKLM->Software->Microsoft->Windows->CurrentVersion->Run. FYI: CHANGE YOUR
REGISTRY AT YOUR OWN RISK.

I hope this helps someone from struggling with this problem for as long as I
have.

Good Luck!

I had the same problem on my Vista PC.

Normal boot up USB Flashdrive is recognised, comes up in my computer
but when i try to view the files on it i can't system hangs, can't view
in explorer.

If i do the same thing in Safemode i can access the USB flashdrive with
no problems.

I found out my culprit was ZoneAlarm and its true vector service
(vsmon.exe)

so boot up normally, shut down zone alarm, plug in usb device and it
can be access OK, start up zone alarm and i can still access it.

But if i have zone alarm running before i plug in the usb device, thats
when all the trouble starts.

hope this solution can help some others also


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mercinaman
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On Sat, 24 May 2008 14:07:01 +0530, mercinaman wrote:

> I had the same problem on my Vista PC.
>
> Normal boot up USB Flashdrive is recognised, comes up in my computer
> but when i try to view the files on it i can't system hangs, can't view
> in explorer.
>
> If i do the same thing in Safemode i can access the USB flashdrive with
> no problems.
>
> I found out my culprit was ZoneAlarm and its true vector service
> (vsmon.exe)
>
> so boot up normally, shut down zone alarm, plug in usb device and it
> can be access OK, start up zone alarm and i can still access it.
>
> But if i have zone alarm running before i plug in the usb device, thats
> when all the trouble starts.
>
> hope this solution can help some others also

The *best* solution is to uninstall ZA (yuck) completely and
activate/utilize the in-build application!

Did you ever get a solution to not being able to consistently view a usb drive via Windows explorer? I have same issue but can see contents from DOS command window.

Please start your own thread describing the particulars, the rest of the
messages have been purged from the primary news server.

Burns wrote:
> Did you ever get a solution to not being able to consistently view a usb drive via Windows explorer? I have same issue but can see contents from DOS command window.

Drive not showing up could be partition error in which case scandisk
might save you or other recovery tools. Though usually you are screw in
these cases.

But there is another possiblity you can hope for. There is a conflict
in assigned drive letters to diffent devise/network drive ect. Or lack
of assigment of drive letter. This problem can easiely be fixed if you
right click on This Computer and choose "Manage" in some lanaguaes
"Adminster".

Then choose "Storage" and you will some under groups and try to look
into them and see if you can find your USB devise. If you find it you
can right click on it and choose change drive letter/path.

Then assign an unused letter to the drive. And things should work


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whiteraven
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