Bill:

This probably won't be of much help, because of inexact info, but 
here goes anyway.

It could be that your system is confused.  A while back I found a 
free utility that allowed one to remove traces of devices that has 
been connected to your USB ports at any time.  It shows you a list of 
what he retains, and in my case it was 40 or 50 entries long, much 
longer than expected.  There were different devices connected to 
different ports at different times.  You can selectively remove 
entries, which might help your system straighten itself out.

I will dig around and see if I can find it, sorry I don't have more 
exact info, but if you throw a bunch of words at it on Google you 
might find it.

Dave

At 04:37 PM 5/31/2009, Sun Sounds of Arizona wrote:
>Okay guys, I'm desperate and have tried everything I know to
>do.
>
>My laptop will not recognize memory devices plugged into the
>USB ports.  I'm running XP home edition.  Printers, blue
>tooth adapters and such plugged into my USB ports work fine.
>However, when ever I try to use a USB flash drive, or an MP3
>player, the system won't show it to me.  I get the sound
>which indicates it has been detected, but in My Computer, it
>never shows up as a drive like it should.  I've tried
>configuration changes, I've even done a repair which
>MIcroSoft has available for just this sort of problem, and
>no dice.  I remember from the DOS days that you could set
>your last drive to be restrictive, and that would prevent a
>system from seeing anything which would have a letter past
>what you'd set as last drive.  I tried that too, and Windows
>told me it didn't recognize the "lastdrive" command.  So, I
>guess that's obsolete.
>
>Any thought would be welcome.
>
>         Bill
>
>
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