USB Drives Not Appearing in 'My Computer' - Please Help! (Solved!)

[AnonymouseUser]

Now, how do I mark this as "solved"?

At the top of the thread, to the top right of the first post, hover "Thread Tools" and click "Edit Title." Just add *Solved* and save.

 

[Elixer]

I FIXED IT!

I opened regedit, went to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices and deleted all entries containing "U.S.B.S.T.O.R..." in the right side of the value data box. Rebooted, plugged in a USB drive and it instantly showed up in Windows Explorer. I'm so glad to have this out of my hair.

Now, how do I mark this as "solved"?

Hmm, so the database was somehow corrupted?
NTFS uses that to remember what device is what, so that is a bit odd that doing that worked.
Too bad you didn't save the key tree before you deleted it, would have been interesting to find out what went wrong.

 

[tcsenter]

Hmm, so the database was somehow corrupted?
NTFS uses that to remember what device is what, so that is a bit odd that doing that worked.
Too bad you didn't save the key tree before you deleted it, would have been interesting to find out what went wrong.

Yeah I saw a couple 'solutions' to similar problems that involved deleting entries in the registry such as the 'upper' and 'lower' filter entries (used to affect ATAPI devices like CD-ROMs back in the XP and 9x days) but decided against sharing because not always sure what will be the consequence. Here is one that I had not before seen though:

https://ckon.wordpress.com/2011/04/08/windows-usb-problems-usbstor-inf/

 

[tcsenter]

I'll have to add this to my toolkit and keep in mind for future reference:

USB Oblivion (purge all previously plugged USB and CD/DVD removable drives from registry or even traces in USN Journal)