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Help! FAT32 formatted USB devices not working in Windows XP

post #1 of 8
1/11/11 at 5:51pm
Thread Starter 
Hi, I need some help from some of you computer gurus who are smarter then me.

My computer (Asus Z71V) just recently started running into some problems recognizing FAT32 based USB in Windows XP. Please note, NTFS formatted USB devices STILL work perfectly fine, I have 3 external harddrives that all work perfectly, and they are formatted in NTFS.

Here is what I am experiencing and what I have done to troubleshoot so far:

My computer was working fine with FAT32 USB devices until it crashed one day and started an infinite blue screen loop on startup. I managed to fix this issue by using my original XP installation disc and doing a chkdsk /r in the recovery console.

However, once I did this, I noticed that everytime I plug in a FAT32 formatted USB device such as a flash drive or my iPod, I just get the message:

Quote:
"The disk in drive 'X' is not formatted, would you like to format it now?"
I know that my drive is fine though, cause I plugged into another computer right after, and it works.

Next thing I did was go into the device manager and uninstall all of the USB devices and reboot, hoping that windows would fix this issue when the drivers were reinstalled on reboot. Alas, this was not to be, since I still had the same problems after doing so.

I am now out of ideas, short of reformatting (which I would not like to do, since it would be a pain to get my computer back to it's current state). I turn to you and would like any suggestions on what I could try to resolve this irritating issue.

Thanks for any help!

P.S. - Relevant system specs:
Asus Z71V laptop
Windows XP SP3
Intel 915PM chipset
82801FB/FBM version 265C USB2 drivers.
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post #2 of 8
1/11/11 at 7:23pm
Is this happening with multiple flash drives or just one? It could be that the drive is dying and you need a new one. I had a dying flash drive do that for me - it would work fine on some computers but not on others, then it got worse and wouldn't work at all.
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post #3 of 8
1/11/11 at 7:28pm
Is it still true that your newly-repaired OS image is an honest-to-goodnes service pack 3?
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post #4 of 8
1/11/11 at 7:31pm
Also, have you had Windows rescan your drives? Go to the Disk Management tool ("manage") and have it rescan all storage devices. Try this with the usb stick in all available USB ports on your machine.
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post #5 of 8
1/11/11 at 7:36pm
Also might be of help.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/871233

Essentially:
Method 1: Initiate recognition of the USB device by using Device Manager
Method 2: Disable power management of the USB hub


Taken from microsoft's support site.
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post #6 of 8
1/12/11 at 2:11am
Thread Starter 
@galahad05 - yes it is SP3. Also, I tried all of the above and it didn't resolve my issue.

I forgot to mention that windows will detect the device, and say it is working properly, however, it just can't recognize the FAT32 formatting. Not really sure what to do now.

Here is a picture of what I am talking about:
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post #7 of 8
1/12/11 at 2:41am
google'd around for awhile--one (slight) possibility that turned up: try to re-assign the drive letter (volume letter) for the offending device under computer management. This worked for one guy at least ("thumb drive not recognized").
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post #8 of 8
1/12/11 at 3:16pm
Put drive in another PC... Recover all data onto that PC... Put drive into annoying PC that won't see FAT partition... Reformat drive in FAT or FAT32 if it allows...
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