Flash drive not seen?

[ddrumman2004]

I recently received a Verbatim "Tuff & Tiny", 16GB flash drive to store photos off of my desktop computer. That computer is a home built unit approx 6 years old, running XP Home SP1. It's used primarily for running simulator programs with little to no internet browsing. The photos loaded on to the flash drive with no problems.
The computer assigns it the drive letter "H" and the drive is a FAT 32 file system.

Now the problem comes when I insert the flash drive into any of three USB ports on this HP ZV6000 laptop I'm on.....it doesn't see it.
This laptop runs XP Home SP2 and is approx 5 years old.
This laptop also fails to see my LG Octane phone that has an 8GB memory card BUT....the desktop sees it as a USB mass storage device.
This laptop sees my Nikon D40 when it's connected as well as it sees my Sansa Mp3 player so I know the USB ports work.
The desktop sees these also.

Any advice as to why the older desktop running an out of date OS, as far as updates and SPs are concerned, sees it but yet this "newer" laptop doesn't?

The Windows services match on each computer, as far as what is running and disabled.
For the record, my wife's Toshiba laptop with Vista fails to see the flash drive as well.

Any ideas?

 

[Deltona_Dave]

Flash drive is bad. I have had several do the exact thing. I carry a Kingston 8 gig everywhere and it has been reliable for 2 years. Vista and 7 don't like the FAT 32 and always wants to disk check it.

Dave

 

[ddrumman2004]

Explain then why the drive works on the desktop please.

If it's bad, it wouldn't work at all...right?

Like I said, this laptop won't even see my phone as storage but the desktop does. Why would everything I have work on the desktop but only two out of all those work on this laptop?

 

[Al]

Don't know why..but I have one flash drive that will not work on my USB hub. Plug it in a direct USB port..no problem. Yet another flash drive works on the hub..go figure.

 

[OVERKILL]

It is a compatibility issue. I have had the same problem with my Kingston on the odd occasion. Some machines just won't read it.

Check to see if there is a BIOS update for the laptop.

 

[ddrumman2004]

Thanks Overkill.

Not sure about updating the BIOS on this machine as I have never done that to any computer. Is it hard to do? What should I watch out for?

 

[cp3]

I know on our work machines that run XP I have had to go into Disk Management and assign or change the drive letter several times for people to use flash drives. Might be worth a shot?

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted By: ddrumman2004
Thanks Overkill.

Not sure about updating the BIOS on this machine as I have never done that to any computer. Is it hard to do? What should I watch out for?


Easy to do on most notebooks, HP will have the update on their website, hp.com.

 

[Deltona_Dave]

My bad, I overlooked the desktop working part. +1 on bios update or on the XP machine going to SP3 might help.

On my old Dell desktop, Vista fouled up the USB ports until I installed the Chipset update.

Dave