Friday, August 15, 2014

USB Hard Disk or storage drive cannot be recognised by WINDOWS ?

Issue: At times Windows 7 may not be able to recognize a hard disk or a USB stick e.g. Sandisk Cruzer Slice and same device would work just fine on another Windows 7 machine ? 

In such case following is a solution that worked for me every time.

Cause: System may be missing some entries in usbstor.inf or file could be missing all together.

Resolution: To resolve this issue perform the following steps:

1. Get copy of USBstore.inf located under %windir%\inf\ folder from machine where the same device worked (make sure operating system is same e.g. Windows 7). You can email the same as well by renaming it to .txt file and then changing it to .inf on time of adding it to your machine.

2. On your machine where you have issue go to %windir%\inf\  folder (usually %windir% c:\Windows) and copy the file that you got from another machine where things worked as expected.

3. Launch device manager, you can do this by selecting  Start,   Run, in Open box type devmgmt.msc and select OK button. 

4. In Windows Device Manager look for Other Devices or Unknown Devices section, you will find your device marked with a yellow sign. Right click on your device and select Uninstall.

5. Stay within Device Manager, select Action menu on the top and select Scan for hardware changes.

6. Once scan finished you should see your device appearing properly.

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