Specific flash drive not working?

I just purchased a new Dell Studio XPS 16 laptop, and while it's mostly gone swimmingly, I've had one problem with it: the machine fails to fully recognize my flash drive.

What is unusual is that it will immediatley recognize my brother's flash drive, which is the exact same manufacturer, model, and capacity.

When I go to Computer Management, the drive shows up as active, and the driver (the drive-specific one, not the UMS driver) can populate and get the USB drive's info... but it never shows up in Explorer, and I can't get any data off it.

Any ideas? If it makes any difference, the machine originally crashed as it was installing drivers for this drive.

notsograymatter said:

Has the drive been given a drive letter? You may need to assign it one via Disk Management. To do so, open Disk Management:
Start > Control Panel > System & Security > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Disk Management
Now click on the drive in question. Right click and click Change drive letter and paths.

If not, you can attempt to use it via another computer. If it's broken there as well, it may be shot.

Unfortunately I have tried that, but Disk Management gives me an error saying that Disk Management console view isn't up to date, and that I must refresh it, or restart Computer Management or the machine. Unfortunately, none of those options work.

Yes, and the drive is fully accessible on any other system. Formatting it to FAT32 or NTFS leaves it still unrecognizable.

Does the computer crashing right as I inserted it the first time mean anything?

I may try repairing all the Windows components related to USB, then. My flash drive is a LaCiE iamaKey. They're really cool drives, so I want this one to work! If all else fails though, I guess I'll buy a new one.

DocBrown said:

When you check Device Manager, do you have any Yellow Triangle Errors on any USB devices?

That was the first thing I checked for, but all the drivers show normal statuses.

I'll try a repair install, then. Let's see how it works!

The repair install worked! Thanks everyone!