USB flash drive disappears when transferring or installing files from it

[raymondo30]

Hello,

Have a 1GB usb flash drive that works without incident on IBM and Dell laptops, however when trying to install or transfer files onto this  HP Pavilion DV7 - Win 7 64bit  laptop it will appear in Win Explorer for a few minutes and then disappear.  When installing or transfering files things will be going as expected and then suddenly the light on the drive goes off and the laptop responds with "file cannot be found".  When I open Win Explorer it shows the "F\:" drive but it appears to be empty.

I was able to get the software on the drive installed but I had to keep removing and reinserting the USB drive to get it to recognize it and then clicking on "Retry" on the "file cannot be found" error message.

I was intending on using a USB flash drive for a backup drive but not if this keeps happening.

I googled this issue, downloaded a supposed fix from MS to no avail.  I've flashed the bios with the most recent version from the HP site here and also turned off power management of the USB ports in device manager.

Any other ideas?!?

Product number of the laptop is VM238UA

[nascar4u]

windows 7 uses NTFS file structures, windows xp used FAT structure

the ibm and dell computers, are they xp systems?

[raymondo30]

The systems that it has worked on are XP, yes.  I'm a bit confused, though, why you can transfer things TO the USB drive without issue but can't transfer FROM it without this problem...

[raymondo30]

Just for fun I formatted the flash drive on the HP Win 7 machine as an NTFS drive.  Loaded some data on it from the IBM machine and then tried to transfer that to the HP laptop.  Same thing, gets about 30 seconds or so into the transfer, the light on the drive goes out and an error pops up saying "file.xyz" cannot be found, skip, retry, cancel.  When I look in the explorer window for the "F:\" drive it appears to be empty until I remove and reinsert the USB drive.

So how it's formatted appears to make no difference with this issue.

Any other ideas?!?

[Huffer]

The FAT32/NTFS was a red herring. Actually XP can be installed on FAT32 and Vista/Win7 cannot but they still work with FAT32 read and write and most flash drives are formatted FAT32. This is a hardware issue; either the usb ports on the computer or the flash drive itself.

[raymondo30]

Given that the USB drive works on other PCs and it does this on EVERY ONE of the four USB ports on the laptop I'm thinking it's a driver or hardware issue on the laptop.

Anyone have a fix for this or experience the same thing?

[mjamaican]

I also purchased an HP Pavilion dv7-3165dx recently and have had the exact same problem with a 16GB kingston datatraveler usb drive.

I've tried the "temporary workaround" on the MS website as well as their "quickfix", but nothing worked. Anyway, last summer I attended -- of all places -- a SIGGRAPH (signature graphics) conference in New Orleans and got a few freebies. One of them was a usb hub for 4 flash drives that plugged into a single usb port on my laptop.

Anyway, whenever I plug it in it gives me a message that says something about my flash drive being able to operate faster if I don't use this hub... BUT when I use the hub -- which obviously slows down data transfers too and from my flash drive -- I can transfer MUCH more data (several hundred MB's) before it quits on me!

I know there must be a better solution, but this works for me. If you can get your hands on a hub, it might work... good luck.

[floresse]

Has a solution been found for this?  I'm having the exact same issue on my HP Pavilion dv7-3079wm and the Kingston 16GB DataTraveler USB drive?  

Thanks 

[ferozekhan267oa]

The solution is here my friend:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/976972

Regards

Feroze

[tricky29]

i had the exact same problem untill i went into device manager then USB controllers then unticked the option in power management, so windows no longer shuts it down to save energy.