USB port problem

Any suggestions on this - I have a flashdisk that appears to be without problem, tried it on three computers and it picks up fine. For some or other reason, my colleague's computer doesn't 'see' the flashdisk when we try it there. When you plug it into the port it does the little 'ding-ding' sound to acknowledge that something's been plugged in, but nothing else happens.

I found that the computer sees the flashdisk immediately after doing a system restore, but once you've rebooted and plug it in again, the same problem happens. When it does see the disk, it tells you that it's not formatted. If you try to format it, it gives an error message.

I've tried the flashdisk on all the usb ports on the computer, also tried to boot with the disk already plugged in, but that doesn't work.

Any thoughts?

I'll add that other usb devices such as his digital camera and cell-phone don't give any problems whatsoever.

All the computers (including my colleague's) have windows xp sp2 on them.

 

Well, I did some research on this and 3 general "fixes"... try reloading the chipset drivers for the PC using the newest ones available; perform a safe re-install of Windows; or go into Disk Management and assign a drive letter to the device. This is probably the most likely "fix" in this particular scenario. Here's what you do:

Right click on My Computer
Choose Manage from the menu
Double click on Storage in the right window pane
Double click on Disk Management(Local) in the right window pane
Find the USB device you have installed and right click
Choose Change Drive Letter and Paths from the menu
Click the Change button and pick a drive letter that is not in use (S and R and good choices)
Click OK and exit the Disk Management program

You have have to do this only once per device per port. This means if you plug the same device into 3 different USB ports you will have to remap 3 times. Windows will remember the device settings after you set the drive letter once.