Fighting similar problems with my first USB Flash Disk
device myself, it's inaccessable and unshown in Win 2000
+SP4 Explorer window. It pops into (Control Panel) Device
Manager list as a new PnP line item under USB Mass Storage
Device -- Generic Flash Disk USB Device, then Properties
shows "Device is working properly". Which gets me nowhere.
* TRY THIS (my new dead-end discovery)...
Right-click "My PC" - Manage to open "Computer Management"
window (an instance of MS Management Console, methinks.)
Expand Tree in left pane... to "Storage" branch, expand it,
Click folder icon "Disk Management" which inventories
Disks & Volumes, and may autolaunch a disk wizard, may be
called similar to "Write Signature... blah-blah Wizard" or
else ???... Clicking through Wizard dialogs to Finish,
closes Wizard and goes back to 1 of several optional Views
(select under menu View) of system Disks, etc.
Hopefully, your USB memory device(s) should be shown in the
View/Top/Disk List &/or in the View/Bottom pane/Graphical
View options. The particular Disk info should display 3
or 4 short line descriptors such as Disk#, type, size, and
"status" (e.g. online, offline, foreign, unreadable,
unrecognized, etc.)
Mine shows 24 MB (of a 32 MB device), "Online",
but "Unknown" type defaulting to "Disk 2" label,
and the Graphic bar shows "Unallocated" (i.e. no
partitions, or formats or anything)...
So still it's recognized by system but remains
inaccessable, unformatable, etc.
As you said,... "FRUSTRATING".
I now can only hope to try a 3rd party software disk
manager on it, e.g. Diskkeeper or Partition Magic
(I'm not familiar with recent versions of Norton's
whatever, that may also have a tool to try.)
GOOD LUCK & PLEASE POST ANY PROGRESS FOR ALL OF US WHO
ARE STUCK WITH THESE PESKY USB FLASH RAM DEVICES.
Mine