USB flash drive says "Unknown Device"?

Question

When I plug it in it is detected but says that the "device is not working properly" and then when I see it in the Device Manager it says "Unknown Device".
It also says in the Device Status in the Properties box
"No drivers are installed for this device. "
I tried updating the driver from the option when you right-click on it but it says no device drivers could be found other than the one already there.
Oh, and I tried the troubleshooter for USB.

I have Microsoft Windows XP Professional,
and the USB flash drive is Sony (256 Megabytes storage).
I've used it before and it was working, but I don't know what's the problem now. Thank you for any help.

Answer 1

one thing you should try doing is > going to the manufacturer site online and going to their driver section and downloading it.

Answer 2

usb plug and play works like this:
You plug in a usb device. The device powers up and sends a signal to the controller that means "Hello".
The controller responds to the device with a message that means "Who are you?"
The device answere with a code that identifies the manufacturer ,and a product type.
The controller has the computer look in for the manufacturer and product code in the registry to find out which driver is needed to talk to the device.
if the code is found, the computer load the driver to work with the device.
some times a registry error will occur that dissociates the product id from the driver entry. if you uninstall the driver and reinstall it, it may not remove the bad entry from the registry, and a new one wil be added. but the usb plug and play may find the bad entry first and look no further. You may need to run a registry repair utility to identify and remove the bad entry.

Answer 3

I would go into Device Manager (Right click My Computer, Manage) and remove the instance of the Sony usb device.

unplug the usb unit

reboot

plug in the device. It should reinstall and work.

Answer 4

answer #a million, reboot, see if rebooting enables it to get regarded answer #2, attempt yet another USB port and see if it extremely works. answer #3, get a USB 2.0 PCI card and see if that solves your issue. i'm having this issue with my printer as we communicate, it style of feels that utilizing a particular USB port motives an blunders, I plugged it into yet another one and it extremely works high-quality... for a lengthy time period notwithstanding the blunders shows up back and that i change ports and it extremely works back. that's on a clean motherboard too and a Gigabyte no a lot less (K8U-939). that's a hardware issue, no longer software. And the region isn't your pen stress, the region is that your USB port is having an unspecified malfunction (i do not comprehend what's incorrect with mine both).

Answer 5

Try reinstalling the USB flash.
Go to "Control Panel" then go to "Add/Remove Hardware"
There you can let the computer install the USB flash.
If there's still a problem using the flash you're just better off getting a new one!

Answer 6

If your computer has an AMD CPU, and Viatech USB Host Controllers; changing the USB Host Controller drivers to standard or generic drivers, may work. Sometimes, putting a line in config.sys, helps. ie. "lastdrive=m"

Answer 7

Its probably knackered !! I had the same issue with mine and binned it, they are soooo cheap to buy, You can use an mp3 player as long as it is classed as a 'Mass storage device' with these you dont need to install software, they just plug and play, and your pc will recognise it instantly, The place I work, they sell these for £7.99 ... and 1gb for £12.99 (use http://www.xe.com/ucc/ to convert if you need to)

Answer 8

Have you tried putting it in another port? Try to put a new flash drive. If it work then you know your original flash drive is no good.