USB Device not recognized.

[lkiller123]

Hi guys, first time on the SevenForums so go easy on me I consider my self pretty savvy when it comes to computers, but this problem made me question myself. Today while I was repairing my friend's virus-infested laptop, I've made a terrible mistake - I used my very own USB flash drive on his laptop. I was a bit too late when I came to realize this, and his laptop could no longer identify my flash drive.

First off, I thought that this might be his computer's problem, but it wasn't. I tried plugging it into my own computer when I get home, and the computer would not recognize it.

For troubleshooting, I did the following.

• Plugging it into different USB ports on my computer.
• Restarting the computer
• Plugging it into another computer
• Plug a different USB drive.

I've come to a conclusion that only the flash drive that I used to plug into my friend's computer was not working. Of course I did a virus scan after the troubleshooting - it gave me 5 infections from Trojan Generic and 2 from Trojan Downloader.

My first guess is that the viruses made my flash drive went kaput, and that I will need to reformat it. But now the computer could not even recognize the drive.

I will appreciate you guys' help.

 

[Jonathan_King]

Welcome!

Is the drive displayed in Device Manager and/or disk managment?

 

[lkiller123]

Welcome!

Is the drive displayed in Device Manager and/or disk managment?

Thanks for the quick response! No, it is not displayed in Device Manager nor Disk Managment.

 

[Jonathan_King]

I wonder if the drive is fried. I don't know how much a virus can do, but there is also the possibility the infected computer itself was the culprit.

My final check is look in popup boot menu in the BIOS for the drive. Also, boot up the repair disc and open a command prompt. Then enter the following:

diskpart

list disk

If the drive is not displayed, I would toss it.

 

[lkiller123]

Nope, it isn't displayed on there. So you mean that the drive the burnt? What might be the factors that made the flask disk itself burn?

 

[Jonathan_King]

The only thing I can think of that could cause a drive to die is a voltage spike. I'm not sure if a virus could cause that, but a bad motherboard certainly could.

Of course, however unlikely, there is always the coincidence that the drive died of natural causes, after being used in the infected machine.