USB Memory Sticks
 

I have 2 memory sticks, one of which in explorer I right clicked on and selected properties and reformatted it as FAT32 as I wanted to use it on a portable video player, now if I put either of my memory sticks in any of my USB ports and right click on it explorer freezes and restarts. I can still read and write to them perfectly happily and I've re-installed the drivers. Any one with any ideas please? (Windows7 Pro)

I guess I'd backup all data and then go for restore to a prior date or reinstall Windows.

Or bravely find a way round via MSDOS
MS-DOS help and commands

Better still, wait for Milo, he'll be along soon.

Hope you're coping ok with android, post any probs, I've trod that route and may be able to give some quick tips. Mike :ok:

Installed what drivers?
From WinXp onwards (and for some earlier windows versions) you do not need drivers to read memory sticks: the OS has native USB drive support.

Installing a third party driver may be the problem. Exactly what did you install, and what version of Windows do you have?
What is the make / model of the drives?

edit
PS USB memory sticks are virtually always preloaded as FAT32 - I've never seen an NTFS one yet, Why did you need to reformat? At face value it doesn't seem to make sense......

Milo I un-installed the USB hubs and re-installed them, when I look at them in 'device manager' it tells me that the drivers are Microsoft ones.

The reason for reformatting was that the video player couldn't read them, just told me the device was empty, having re-formatted to FAT32 it can now read them and play videos from them.

A I said earlier, Windows 7 pro, and it's fully patched.

Wondering if you've somehow invoked the need for finalising stuff?

I'll get back to my Dandy Annual.............

Having bought a 16gb flash drive from a reputable manufacturer (think brown sauce) was very disappointed to discover that, while I could copy individual files to it, any attempt to down load large folders resulted in my whole computer (XP) freezing after two or three items. Ctrl/Alt/delete had no effect. Only solution - switch off.
Can any expert explain the problem in terms that a computer novice might understand?

GG
I'm assuming that you simply deleted the hubs in device manager and then refound them....if so that shouldn't cause issues.
However can you just confirm one thing - you formatted ONE pen drive, and now BOTH are giving you problems? Or were both reformatted?

scotbill
Are you sure the machine was actually stalling, or simply not visually responding while copying files? Its common for a large file copy over USB to apparently stall a machine while the files are actually moved. Especially true of Vista, but other versions of windows do it also
The machine will usually come back to life after the transfer is complete

Only one was reformatted milo. However I've just discovered that the problem in fact exists on all of my drives from C onwards but I can right click on folders.

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: Explorer.EXE
Application Version: 6.1.7601.17567
Application Timestamp: 4d672ee4
Fault Module Name: SHELL32.dll
Fault Module Version: 6.1.7601.17859
Fault Module Timestamp: 4fd2dfec
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 00000000000504aa
OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.48
Locale ID: 2057
Additional Information 1: ca8f
Additional Information 2: ca8f558e0af13528272e1696c1b4ede4
Additional Information 3: 8687
Additional Information 4: 8687972c7d82fec3a6a61d7582b74966

Looking at that report, do you think I should replace SHELL32.dll?

I'm beginning to think the memory stick was just co-incidental and an update has fouled up somewhere.

As an update, it does it in safe mode, I also ran the system file checker while in the safe mode and it said no errors. It's not the end of the world as I can always do a format using the Command Prompt.

Is it possible that the stick you reformatted had a U3 or StartKey partition and apps on it?

Reformatting the drive may have removed part but not all of the associated components. Subsequently, inserting the drive into a PC might have made some registry changes that the formatted drive no longer had the ability to undo upon removal.

U3 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

OK, guessing here, but at this stage I'd be worried about a rootkit or shell hijack.
Major system cleanup required - boot from a live CD and replace explorer.exe and userinit.exe
Then a manual clearout of all temp files, followed by a series of rootkit and virus scans
My concern would be that one of those pen drives was compromised

Sorry not to come back sooner, but I've been involved in the major project of putting some vhs tapes onto the pc then onto dvds and since most of it was over 2 hrs it had to be split, :ugh: luckily most of it was in 2 acts or more.

Anyway having run out of space on drive C I cleared out all the data and moved it to D thus freeing up around 24G of space ran CCleaner and had a good clear up and the problem's gone, so your guess is as good as mine.

Unlikely to be a virus on the mem stick as the only thing it had been in was the portable video player which I think runs xxNIX

I haven't yet made a live cd as I've not yet got my addled brain around WinBuilder, and avast refused to allow make_pe anywhere near the computer.

All my sticks have a led which flickers during write.

Brown sauce? Bin it!!! And any relations like c....q Incompatibility personified, imho.