usb flash drive not being assigned a driver letter ???

hi,

Am trying to get a win98se machine to accept a USB Flash drive, different
manufacturers, but same problem, will not show up...

I get an exclamation mark in the device manager, but when I try to "update
driver", it tells me I already have the best driver installed and it will
keep that one.

I ran the software installation for the two different drives (IOMagic, and a
PNY Attache), but it acts like it's not able to take the next drive letter.
I've checked the bios but can see nothing out of the ordinary, USB support
is enabled,

I have also gone into the device manager, CD properties, and set the
"reserved drive letter" to everything from F: to Z:, that made no
difference, and now I have it set for only Y: and Z: I could not go back to
having nothing showing in those setting.

In XP the problem of not assigning a drive letter was due to having mapped
all the drive letters, but I can find nothing about how to fix this in
Win98SE... I have no mapped drives in Win98se, I do have 3 partitions, C:,
D:, and E:, and the CD Drive is letter F:.

any ideas how to get this O/S to recognize the USB Flash drive?

thanks,
niteowl

On Thu, 28 Dec 2006 00:50:06 -0500, "Niteowl"
wrote:

hi,

Am trying to get a win98se machine to accept a USB Flash drive, different
manufacturers, but same problem, will not show up...

I get an exclamation mark in the device manager, but when I try to "update
driver", it tells me I already have the best driver installed and it will
keep that one.

I ran the software installation for the two different drives (IOMagic, and a
PNY Attache), but it acts like it's not able to take the next drive letter.
I've checked the bios but can see nothing out of the ordinary, USB support
is enabled,

I have also gone into the device manager, CD properties, and set the
"reserved drive letter" to everything from F: to Z:, that made no
difference, and now I have it set for only Y: and Z: I could not go back to
having nothing showing in those setting.

In XP the problem of not assigning a drive letter was due to having mapped
all the drive letters, but I can find nothing about how to fix this in
Win98SE... I have no mapped drives in Win98se, I do have 3 partitions, C:,
D:, and E:, and the CD Drive is letter F:.

any ideas how to get this O/S to recognize the USB Flash drive?

thanks,
niteowl

Just a thought. In TweakUI under the My Computer tab do you have ALL
drives checked? You should.

Happy New Year !!

Regards,

Bill Watt
Win98 Computer Help & Other Information http://home.ptd.net/~bwatt/

have just had the same problem with a Pakard Bell External drive that was
OK and then did the same thing of not being recognized.

I downloaded CCleaner and used it to remove most of the applications which
were starting at boot up (It's amazing how the list grows with sloppy
housekeeping) and everything was fine ~ I don't know which application had
been causing the problem as I didn't try after each removal, I just had a
big clear out.

John

"Bill Watt" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 28 Dec 2006 00:50:06 -0500, "Niteowl"
wrote:

hi,

Am trying to get a win98se machine to accept a USB Flash drive, different
manufacturers, but same problem, will not show up...

I get an exclamation mark in the device manager, but when I try to "update
driver", it tells me I already have the best driver installed and it will
keep that one.

I ran the software installation for the two different drives (IOMagic, and
a
PNY Attache), but it acts like it's not able to take the next drive
letter.
I've checked the bios but can see nothing out of the ordinary, USB support
is enabled,

I have also gone into the device manager, CD properties, and set the
"reserved drive letter" to everything from F: to Z:, that made no
difference, and now I have it set for only Y: and Z: I could not go back
to
having nothing showing in those setting.

In XP the problem of not assigning a drive letter was due to having mapped
all the drive letters, but I can find nothing about how to fix this in
Win98SE... I have no mapped drives in Win98se, I do have 3 partitions,
C:,
D:, and E:, and the CD Drive is letter F:.

any ideas how to get this O/S to recognize the USB Flash drive?

thanks,
niteowl

Just a thought. In TweakUI under the My Computer tab do you have ALL
drives checked? You should.

yes, they were all checked.. thanks,

niteowl

"killjoy" wrote in message
...
have just had the same problem with a Pakard Bell External drive that was
OK and then did the same thing of not being recognized.

I downloaded CCleaner and used it to remove most of the applications which
were starting at boot up (It's amazing how the list grows with sloppy
housekeeping) and everything was fine ~ I don't know which application had
been causing the problem as I didn't try after each removal, I just had a
big clear out.

John

thanks, not sure I'd want to just clean out mass stuff, this isn't my
computer, a friend who is not comptuer savvy at all... I will start
checking to see what all is starting up though.. it's been a while since I
worked on a win98 machine, so I'm a bit rusty as to how things work here.

I did remove almost 600 sypware and adware crap with Adaware and Spybot,
guess I need to dig a little deeper.

I'm not sure if the USB has ever worked for her... when I first plugged one
in, windows did do a driver search/update, so I know it detected it, but
after installing the software, it just will not assign a drive letter. This
has happened before on other machines, I just can't remember how I fixed
it.. ? memory isn't what it used to be.

thanks anyway,

niteowl

"Niteowl" wrote in message
...

I'm not sure if the USB has ever worked for her... when I first plugged
one
in, windows did do a driver search/update, so I know it detected it, but
after installing the software, it just will not assign a drive letter.
This
has happened before on other machines, I just can't remember how I fixed

Is this USB flashdrive one of those that requires
formatting before it is used?

--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)

"Don Phillipson" wrote in message
...
"Niteowl" wrote in message
...

I'm not sure if the USB has ever worked for her... when I first plugged
one
in, windows did do a driver search/update, so I know it detected it, but
after installing the software, it just will not assign a drive letter.
This
has happened before on other machines, I just can't remember how I fixed

Is this USB flashdrive one of those that requires
formatting before it is used?

no, it should be ready to go... I have two kinds at the moment that I've
tried, an PNY 512, and an IOMagic 8G... both worked first time out in my XP
machines.. ???

"Niteowl" wrote in message
...

Is this USB flashdrive one of those that requires
formatting before it is used?

no, it should be ready to go... I have two kinds at the moment that I've
tried, an PNY 512, and an IOMagic 8G... both worked first time out in my
XP
machines.. ???

So how do you know that the flashdrive is
preformatted FAT (as Win98 requires) and
not NTFS (default for WinXP, inaccessible to Win98) ?

--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)

"Don Phillipson" wrote in message
...
"Niteowl" wrote in message
...

Is this USB flashdrive one of those that requires
formatting before it is used?

no, it should be ready to go... I have two kinds at the moment that I've
tried, an PNY 512, and an IOMagic 8G... both worked first time out in my
XP
machines.. ???

So how do you know that the flashdrive is
preformatted FAT (as Win98 requires) and
not NTFS (default for WinXP, inaccessible to Win98) ?

well, I guess I assume since they advertise compatible with win98 that it
must be FAT..

I did finally get the IOMagic one to work, only had one out of four usb
ports that it would work on, so bought a PCI_USB2.0 card and put it in, it
worked on that one too, but couldn't get both flash drives to work at the
same time more than once. It has to be some kind of conflict, but I'm
letting it go for now, the 8G worked, so she'll just have to use that one
till we get her upgraded to an XP machine.

thanks for the responses..

niteowl

Perhaps at least test the possibility of background apps being teh problem
by using my Clean Boot procedures. First link in my signature.

If the user is a novice, the *first* favor I'd do is to review the
background apps and clear out the useless ones. If you want advice on them,
use MSINFO32, Software Environment Startup Programs (or something like
that.) Click into the list, then press Ctrl-A, then Ctrl-C to copy the list
which you can then Paste into a reply here.

--

Gary S. Terhune
MS-MVP Shell/User
http://grystmill.com/articles/cleanboot.htm
http://grystmill.com/articles/security.htm

Niteowl wrote:
"killjoy" wrote in message
...
have just had the same problem with a Pakard Bell External drive
that was OK and then did the same thing of not being recognized.

I downloaded CCleaner and used it to remove most of the applications
which were starting at boot up (It's amazing how the list grows with
sloppy housekeeping) and everything was fine ~ I don't know which
application had been causing the problem as I didn't try after each
removal, I just had a big clear out.

John

thanks, not sure I'd want to just clean out mass stuff, this isn't my
computer, a friend who is not comptuer savvy at all... I will start
checking to see what all is starting up though.. it's been a while
since I worked on a win98 machine, so I'm a bit rusty as to how
things work here.
I did remove almost 600 sypware and adware crap with Adaware and
Spybot, guess I need to dig a little deeper.

I'm not sure if the USB has ever worked for her... when I first
plugged one in, windows did do a driver search/update, so I know it
detected it, but after installing the software, it just will not
assign a drive letter. This has happened before on other machines, I
just can't remember how I fixed it.. ? memory isn't what it used
to be.
thanks anyway,

niteowl