Good afternoon.

I am currently experiencing problems with the USB's on my computer. Whenever I plug a USB drive in it does not register as a drive in Windows Explorer. However I know the drive is connected because I get the default sound from the computer when I connect it.

I am able to access the drive via Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Disk Management. The drive appears along with the Hard Drive. When I place the mouse over the drive and right click > Change Drive Letter and Paths I can add or Change the Drive Letter. However even after doing this it is still not visible in windows explorer.

I can access information on the USB drive if I place the mouse over the drive and right click on either open or explore. After doing this the contents of the drive will open in a separate window and I can cut and paste files onto / from the drive. If I create a new directory using this option I am unable to include spaces, etc in the folder name. Similar to the old DOS rules.

I am unable to access the drive using the DOS prompt.

The drive does appear under the Safely Remove Hardware icon on the bottom right of the screen.

I recently replaced my motherboard and CPU. I don't know whether it has anything to do with that. I thought I may have changed a BIOS setting perhaps.

I very much appreciate any assistance you may have regarding this problem.

I am currently studying and never realised just how much I rely on my USB drives to transfer info between my home computer, my work computer and the Uni computers, etc.

Once again thanks.

PS I am a bit of a jubii when it comes to computers.

Cheers
Nigel.

get a hold of your operationg system cd, put ut in, boot on cd, choose E or R for the repair option, then you will meet a command line tool, type in 1 and hit enter if you haven't done that yet, then type chkdsk -p, this may take a while, when it's done type exit and hit enter and let computer boot normally and see if it heloed(how on earth did i get that?! ) i mean to see if it works

Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 does not detect your new USB device

Thanks for that Zimon.

Your advice is really appreciated.

I will have a crack at trying to fix it over the weekend.

Cheers
Nigeld

Thanks Budapest.

This also sounds good.

I will have a crack at trying to fix it over the weekend.

I am currently inundated with assignments so I don't have time right now.

Anyway once again thanks, I really appreciate you responding.

Cheers mate
NigelD