How to get a thumb drive to mount

October 27, 2008 12:09 PM

Help me get a Memorex USB TravelDrive to work once again with my Dell Laptop!

I received a 4gb Memorex USB TravelDrive thumb drive as a gift. I attached it to my Dell Inspiron 6400 laptop (windows XP), and the computer froze before the drive would mount.

I rebooted, but now the drive won't do anything at all except lock the computer up. The drive works on other XP computers and in my Macintosh at home.

Running device manager shows the device is working properly, but it never fully mounts and ends up taking the OS down instead. I have tried wiping the thumb drive and starting over, but it never works with my laptop.

How can I "reset" things to make the drive work again?

posted by jazon to computers & internet (5 comments total)

What do you mean by "wiping," "never works," "lock up" and "froze?" I just don't know how you could get into device manager if the key was locking up the machine. That said, if you can get into Device Manager you can get into Disk Manager and format the thing.
posted by rhizome at 12:50 PM on October 27, 2008

By wiping I mean: I stuck the thumb drive into another computer and erased it.

By never works I mean: every time I put the drive into my laptop it fails to mount properly, allow me to open it, and it brings down my system.

by Lock Up and Freeze I mean: any Explorer windows show an hour glass, I can't click on an item in the task bar to switch between applications and windows, I can't eject the drive, and if I pull it out of the USB slot Windows Explorer and the desktop dissapear and have to relaunch.

To try disk manager, I launched it from my computer -> manage, then stuck in the thumb drive. Disk Manager is now showing an hour glass. The My Computer window is showing an hour glass. The drive doesn't mount properly so I can't format it.

If I pull the drive out the hour glasses go away (and this time the desktop didn't have to reload).
posted by jazon at 1:24 PM on October 27, 2008

Use disk administrator on another machine to actually format the drive. I imagine the wiping you did was just to open it in Explorer and delete all the files you saw, but if - like a lot of usb drives these days - the drive has its own software on it that your PC is choking on, then a straight format should do it. You just have to format on a clean(er) machine. Also, check your Add/Remove Programs to see if there's any Memorex s/w in there you can uninstall, since that may be what's causing problems.
posted by rhizome at 12:26 PM on October 29, 2008

Thanks rhizome. I did use disk admin on another machine before, and did go back and wipe it again "just to be sure". I got the key to mount once, then things flaked out again. I'll check out the add/remove programs to see if there's something there as well.
posted by jazon at 4:30 PM on October 29, 2008

As we approach the 30 day cut-off, I did want to drop a final note - the issue is unresolved at this time.

I did not find anything in add/remove programs that would be causing the issue. I've tried to wipe the thumb drive several times using my laptop. Performance is hit and miss - it may mount initially after the format but after that it doesn't work.

I know that the drive was purchased for about $40. however, I found an 8GB SanDisk thumb drive for sale at Costco for $24, so I bought that instead. I may pass the memorex drive on to someone else who can use it.
posted by jazon at 1:35 PM on November 16, 2008