Why won't my system recognize my USB device?

Read the article that everyone's commenting on.
Subscribe to the RSS Feed for comments on this article.

I have a problem, too.
'USB is not recognized' shows when I try to plug in my memory card (from camera), external hard drive, and flash drive. It just happened since yesterday. What should I do? I'm wondering if it's because of the Window Update or not... I also found 'Error 8007006E' when I tried to download 2 files (the system recommended for me) from Window Update.

I use Window Vista for my laptop. Any suggestions?

hi everyone,
i have a similar problem, however it is with the usb device itself.
last year i bought a 2Gb Shintaro usb memory stick, and at first it works fine, i had a large amount of information stored on it (around 1.7gb) and it still worked fine for a few more months... then towards the end of last year my computer stopped recognising it. i have tried connecting to other computers and they all don't recognise it. now my computer simply wont even agnowledge that it is there, but my usb ports are fine. so it is clearly a problem with the usb device itself. i know that the obvious thing to do is to throw it out and buy a new one, but i have over 1.5gb of important documents and information stored on it and i need to get that information off... is there anything i can do to to retrieve those documents etc??
please help me

When I plug something into the USB ports it does'nt show up in "Computer" I don't know how else to open the information other than through "computer" and since it doesn't show that anything is plugged in I don't know what to do. I have a USB microphone and the recording software still picks it up in at least one port but it's not recoginized anywhere else. Thanks.

My laptop HP G6000 used to know my sony ericsson and i could upload photo's fine but i think i did something in my media player on my computer because it dosent know my phone any more and i dont know what to do, please help me leo!!

Most excellent information utilizing Computer Management & assigning drive letters to specific storage devices, in this case Kingston USB jump drives. I had letters up to Z filled having partitions & external drive but was allowed to add A & B. Great work around idea, thanks.

i bought an ext hdd (western digital - scorpio blue 160G) but my pc can't detect the hdd. i got 2 pc one run P3 & one run P4 , i've tried on both pc.on the P3 pc fine but on P4 pc it can't detect the hdd.i'm confuse. i've tried the P4 pc with every usb device(thumb drive,digital camera, card reader etc.) & it runs ok but not the ext hdd i've just bought.
when i plug in the hdd got that normal sound detecting any usb device but in my computer there's no sign of it. i open device manager there's a yellow icon stated unknown device.

i installed an oiusbf family kernel on my mac and now my all of my usb ports r locked my keyboard doesnt even respond can anyone help!!!!!!!!!

I've had to deal with a lot is the USB storage drives (eg pen drives) that start giving the 'device not recognized' error message.

One trick to try when ALL else has failed, is to
open up the casing the drive is held in.

An awful lot I have retrieved data from, the fault has been the solder on connectors worn off, or snapped or the like.

Manually holding it in the right place, requiring a fair bit of patience to get it just right, will often be recognised as a USB drive, and allow me to rescue the information.

I'd stress to try it on more than one computer before trying this.

ok so i bought my LG KS3360 7 months ago, it came with a lead to put files onto my computer from my phone but i lost that lead, so i bought a new one and everytime i plug the USB cable in, it says "USB device not recognized" and it keeps making the "connected" noise and then dissconects straight away.. whats up with it?

I'm trying to help my brother fix his Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo laptop running Windows Vista. One day out of the blue, his mouse stopped working, also noticed no access to external drive. On testing NO devices would work on ANY USB connection. (tested them in other computers and they work) In the devices area WVista says all usbs Hubs are working fine and the drivers are up-to-date. However when you plug something in (say a mouse or a drive) it comes up with the message that it is an UNKNOWN device. If you follow through to 'fix' the problem it says all the latest drivers are installed. In short, windows wont let you fix it because it says there is no problem.
On instpection I did find that there were NO USB keys AT ALL (Is this usual?) in the registry under "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\" whereas on my own laptop there are many entries there. In fact there are NO entries at all USB or otherwise in the services area!

So to continue in this fix:
1. are there supposed to be at least ONE or more entries in this reg key?
2. is there a downloadable fix fot this?
3. Failing that, how can I edit his registry to enter new keys and give the correct values? I tried importing my exported keys for that services area and Windows wont let me import it into his registry. (well it does but then it says some weren't entered because they were in use - in fact NONE are entered)

Working on this for over a week now - all help appreciated.
Oh by the way I've cleanly re-installed windows Vista (using FujSiem recovery installation disks)TWICE which did it's own online update from windows in the process - still no usb devices recognised (although as I said, the Devices section says the ports are OK)

To post a comment on "Why won't my system recognize my USB device?", please return to that article's main page.