USB Mass Storage Device Problem

hello to all i am writing about an issue that i have faced with vista
recently. i have an asus p4p800SE mobo and a P4 cpu running vista
ultimate(yea i know no need to tell me i need to upgrade) anyway, the
issue i am having is with an external drive that i have. originally it
was working fine, then one day i plugged it in and it said that the
USB Mass Storage Device cannot be found. i am all up to date on
windows updates, i have even tried installing it from the windows
folder, but to no avail, it does not work. my chipset driver is
incmpatible because it was written for XP and i feel a vista patch is
not coming, my question is, is there any kind of work around for this
problem, as it was working before with a fresh install and then
randomly stopped working. thanks for any help

I cant take credit for this, it was posted in response to another queston by
Robert N. I tried it and it worked!!! Been working on this issue for several
days
Packman


Try this solution !!!

Re: USB Drive Problems with Vista
Was this post helpful ?



I believe that possibly during Vista installation, usbstor.inf (inf that
installs "USB Mass Storage Device") got corrupted or got accidentally deleted
from c:\Windows\inf. When usbstor.inf was restored to c:\Windows\inf and the
system was rebooted, the drives mounted normally again when the device is
plugged in.



There are two ways to get the usbstor.inf file

1. From another Vista system (copy it out of another Vista system and copy
it directly into the C:\Windows\inf directory)

2. If you only have 1 Vista system, run Command Prompt (Run as
administrator). From C:\ do a dir usbstor.inf /s . Wherever the file is
found, copy it to the C:\Windows\inf directory if it is missing from it. (I
remember it being in the driver store cache somewhere on the HDD)

Regards,

Rob


PS if you need a copy of the file you can have a friend email it to you but
make sure it's either zipped or change the file extension to .txt so your
email wont reject it then change it back to .inf and copy it............ Hope
this works for you too.

Packman

On Aug 1, 7:14 pm, Packman <Pack...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:

> I cant take credit for this, it was posted in response to another queston by
> Robert N. I tried it and it worked!!! Been working on this issue for several
> days
> Packman
>
> Try this solution !!!
>
> Re: USB Drive Problems with Vista
> Was this post helpful ?
>
> I believe that possibly during Vista installation, usbstor.inf (inf that
> installs "USB Mass Storage Device") got corrupted or got accidentally deleted
> from c:\Windows\inf. When usbstor.inf was restored to c:\Windows\inf and the
> system was rebooted, the drives mounted normally again when the device is
> plugged in.
>
> There are two ways to get the usbstor.inf file
>
> 1. From another Vista system (copy it out of another Vista system and copy
> it directly into the C:\Windows\inf directory)
>
> 2. If you only have 1 Vista system, run Command Prompt (Run as
> administrator). From C:\ do a dir usbstor.inf /s . Wherever the file is
> found, copy it to the C:\Windows\inf directory if it is missing from it. (I
> remember it being in the driver store cache somewhere on the HDD)
>
> Regards,
>
> Rob
>
> PS if you need a copy of the file you can have a friend email it to you but
> make sure it's either zipped or change the file extension to .txt so your
> email wont reject it then change it back to .inf and copy it............ Hope
> this works for you too.
>
> Packman

thanks for the help, but now i have another problem, when the the
device driver is installed successfully, the external drive comes up
as an unknown device in device manager and it is not present in my
computer, is there any help out there

On Aug 1, 7:14 pm, Packman <Pack...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:

> I cant take credit for this, it was posted in response to another queston by
> Robert N. I tried it and it worked!!! Been working on this issue for several
> days
> Packman
>
> Try this solution !!!
>
> Re: USB Drive Problems with Vista
> Was this post helpful ?
>
> I believe that possibly during Vista installation, usbstor.inf (inf that
> installs "USB Mass Storage Device") got corrupted or got accidentally deleted
> from c:\Windows\inf. When usbstor.inf was restored to c:\Windows\inf and the
> system was rebooted, the drives mounted normally again when the device is
> plugged in.
>
> There are two ways to get the usbstor.inf file
>
> 1. From another Vista system (copy it out of another Vista system and copy
> it directly into the C:\Windows\inf directory)
>
> 2. If you only have 1 Vista system, run Command Prompt (Run as
> administrator). From C:\ do a dir usbstor.inf /s . Wherever the file is
> found, copy it to the C:\Windows\inf directory if it is missing from it. (I
> remember it being in the driver store cache somewhere on the HDD)
>
> Regards,
>
> Rob
>
> PS if you need a copy of the file you can have a friend email it to you but
> make sure it's either zipped or change the file extension to .txt so your
> email wont reject it then change it back to .inf and copy it............ Hope
> this works for you too.
>
> Packman

Thanks that fixed that issue but now a new issue has arose, after the
driver installs successfully, the external drive is called an unknown
device and it doesnt appear in my computer, any ideas for help