When your flash driver won't work on PC ....

lindsmuse

Here's a tip. Because of whatever sequence of events suddenly your flash driver becomes totally unrecognized by your PC. Remove USB. Close down your PC. UNPLUG PC. Switch off at the wall just to be sure. Then switch on, plug in, and switch PC on, start up as usual, then try again.

Apparently you reboot the motherboard this way or something. Its worked everytime I've done it. Makes me wonder whether the computer repair shops know this, and you run to them with this problem but its already solved before you even put your PC in our car ... ?

FOund this tip on the internet in a desperate moment ..

RobK

Seems like what you're actually doing is "draining" all the power from the motherboard and reseting the USB ports in the process. If this is happening on a regular basis, I'd say you have a problem with that board and it will eventually fail.

AlanRatcliffe

Often just plugging into a different USB port will work. My flash drives are temperamental plugged into the front ports on my work PC, but work fine on the rear ports. Sometimes it's just the OS turning off the USB port to "save power" and then not turning it back on again when needed - then you have to reboot.

aja

Alan Ratcliffe wrote temperamental plugged into the front ports

Often front ports are connected to internal "green" USB headers, as is usually the case with Gigabyte motherboards. These may have advanced power saving features (hardware based, not software based) but are also normally unable to support devices that require large amounts of current, such as USB charging cellphones/MP3 players, or external hard drives.

Sometimes you can solve this by connecting the internal cable to a different header, or resorting to a USB hub connected to an onboard USB connector at the back of the computer.

TomCat

What happens is your Cache memory fills up and is not refreshed. By turning off the power / unlugging from the wall you are clearing the Cache. The Cache reloads afresh on boot up and all is well.

This is a common problem with laptops as turning off the power does not delete the cache as the battery still supplies power. As a habit I remove the battery from my laptop once a week to do clear the cache.....keeps thing nice and fresh and my USB's always work....