USB Mass Storage devices won't install

[speedy1971]

Hello all

Well this is a strange one.

Anytime I try to plug in a "new" (e.g. never plugged in to this computer before) USB Mass Storage device, device installation fails. When I click on the balloon that says device installation failed, it says "No driver found". If I manually choose a location to search drivers and choose \Windows\System32\Drivers, Device Manager chooses "USB Mass Storage Device" but says "could not install because there was an error". (Gee, thanks, so helpful )

I am getting this error with an old iPod Nano (1st gen!) but it will also happen with USB Memory Keys etc.

Any ideas?

SS

Oh yeah... Windows 7 x64 Dell Studio XPS 8100 8GB

 

[electrotune1200]

Are you running 32 or 64 bit Windows 7?

 

[electrotune1200]

Nevermind....


Go to this site
Dell Drivers and Downloads

Enter your service tag to get the appropriate drivers list. Install the Chipset and Sata Drive drivers.

Let us know if this resolves your problem.

 

[speedy1971]

No effect.

And I tried removing the UpperFilters key for "Disk Drive" class. BAD idea. Won't be trying that again

 

[electrotune1200]

Is this the original install of Windows 7 from Dell?

Have you disabled any services that you can remember?

Have you messed around in the registry? (Any registry cleaners etc.)

 

[speedy1971]

Nope. Stock system. Some crapware removed. I didn't disable any services that would be relevant...

 

[electrotune1200]

OK....

I found this article after doing a bit of research for you.
Windows Vista Cannot Auto Find Driver for New USB Device Plugged In » Tip and Trick

If you want, for your safety I'd set a system restore point before you try this procedure. (Just to be on the safe side)

Go to this location
C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore

Delete the "INFCACHE.1" file. (You may need full administrative privelages)

Let us know if this fixes your problem.

 

[speedy1971]

Interesting.

OK I will try it out tomorrow.

Today I dont want to mess around since I need to activate my iPhone

 

[theog]

This may help:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/97061-driver-install-device-manager.html

 

[speedy1971]

This may help:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/97061-driver-install-device-manager.html

If the solution lie in there, I would have surely found it. I'm no novice to Windows.

 

[speedy1971]

Another thread reminded me that I should follow up on this one.

Theog, there are no drivers to go after, I'm afraid. It's a generic device, it just uses DISK.SYS and PARTMGR.SYS like any other drive. It's simply an old Maxtor IDE disk drive, slapped in a Venus DS9 USB housing. I can plug it into my MacBook (running Vista of course LOL) and it's plain that the device just uses Microsoft generic drivers.

That driver is obviously present in Windows (otherwise it could not boot) so what I did was force the drivers (as in your linked guide) but chose \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32 as the source directory.

When I do that it (correctly) figures out that, yes this should be a USB Mass Storage Device, and it is at that point it reports "Windows attempted to load your driver, but encountered an error. The error was Code 10, Unable to find the specified file".

I also tried forcing the driver by doing Update Driver || Let me search from a list and choose the [Generic] Disk Drive driver. That gets me to the same spot as described above. Code 10. This system just loves that Code 10.

That's what I meant by "tried that". I just got too busy to follow up with other things, and frankly this system is humming except for this, so I am willing to take my time and do things right.

I opened a thread in "Devices" for this since technically this isn't a Crash/Debug thing... but everyone was so heplful when I actually was having BSODs...

SS