Flash drive not showing up in My Computer.

I have a Sandisk Ultra 32 GB flash drive which won't show up in my computer. When I plug it into the USB port the computer makes a sound as normal to acknowledge that the device has been plugged in but it doesn't show up. What I think used to happen was that the computer made a sound, the light flashed for a few seconds and then the computer made a second sound and the drive showed up in my computer. The light on the drive is flashing on and off all the time. I went into control panel, administrative tools, computer management, storage, disk management but again the flash drive does not show up under removable drives. I then went into control panel, device management and opened up disc drives. When I do this my Sandisk Ultra USB device shows up. there is no red x or yellow exclamation mark beside it. So I right clicked on the drive and choose uninstall. The drive disappears. I then went to the top, right clicked and selected scan for hardware changes. The drive now reappears. If I right click and choose properties it states this device is working properly!

I have opened the device and removed the innards in order to check the four connections of the USB connector to the circuit board but there are no breaks and everything appears to be normal. If this was an empty flash drive I'd simply throw it in the bin however it isn't empty. My mother has Alzheimer's and is now in a home. When clearing out her house I came upon thousands of old photographs which I have been scanning and transferring onto this flash drive the idea being to be able to show her a slide show of old photos to stimulate her memory. Most of the photos I transferred over are now gone as I threw them out once they were on the drive. Does anyone have any ideas as to what I should try next? I'm assuming that everything is still on the memory chip and that the fault lies in the board somewhere. I'm considering buying another drive and attempting to transfer the memory chip from mine onto the new one. Anyone tried that before? Would I need the exact same make/size of drive or are the chips generic fitting onto any board? Any help would be much appreciated.

Opening the device and removing the innards was unwarranted. Without hurrying up, you could have checked the device on another working PC. This will always be the first step to determine whether the device is faulty or there is a problem with your PC unless of course you had plugged in another flash drive and checked whether it works.

Anyway do what fireberd has suggested and report the results.

I've seen some cases that Windows installs the wrong drive, and despite it says that the device is working properly, it isn't.
I suggest you to follow Jumanji advice: Try on another computer. If it works, come back and report.

Right click on Start, then open Windows Explorer and see if the drive shows in the left hand column. If it does, click it & see if it displays its contents.

fireberd said:

With the drive plugged in, does it show up in the "Safely Remove Hardware" list? (icon in lower right notification area).
If it does, click on that to remove it, then unplug it from the PC and reboot. After Windows starts, connect it and see if Windows recognizes and allows you to display the contents.

If not, go to the Device Manager, uninstall the drive, then disconnect it from the PC. Reboot the PC and after Windows starts plug it in and Windows should detect it as new hardware and install it and it should work. Doing the uninstall and then scan for new hardware is iffy - sometimes it works but usually you wind up with the same problem.

One of these two suggestion usually work.

For some reason I no longer have "Safely Remove Hardware" where it should be. If I plug in a working flash drive and click on the icon at bottom right all it says is, Open devices and printers. By the way if I have the non-working flash drive plugged in to a USB port and then plug a working flash drive into one of the other ports it doesn't show up until I unplug the faulty one. I do't know if that is a clue to the problem or not. Also tried the uninstall, reboot and plug in but it still wasn't recognised!

By the way I picked up some form of virus a while back which screwed up my computer with adware for a while. As far as I know it's all cleaned off now as I haven't had any other problems but I'm wondering if it did something to hide my drive. Having said that if it did hide my drive why do other drives show up?

Holmes177 said:

Right click on Start, then open Windows Explorer and see if the drive shows in the left hand column. If it does, click it & see if it displays its contents.

Tried that but it doesn't show up.

jumanji said:

Opening the device and removing the innards was unwarranted. Without hurrying up, you could have checked the device on another working PC. This will always be the first step to determine whether the device is faulty or there is a problem with your PC unless of course you had plugged in another flash drive and checked whether it works.

Anyway do what fireberd has suggested and report the results.

I had tried everything I could think of at the time so felt it was worth checking in case one of the connectors was off which would have been an easy fix. Couldn't care less about the drive as I won't be using it again even if it did start working. If I can get the photos off it I'll be throwing it in the bin. I know the PC is fine as other flash drives work in it okay.

The problem can be your computer (driver) not the Sandisk Ultra 32 GB flash drive.
Once again, did you tried on another computer?

Megahertz07 said:

The problem can be your computer (driver) not the Sandisk Ultra 32 GB flash drive.
Once again, did you tried on another computer?

Have to dig the old laptop out of the loft and then I can try that.