Aug 04, 2023 • Filed to: USB Recovery • Proven solutions
Sometimes this situation will happen to you: you plug your USB drive into your computer, and see a balloon popping at the right-hand corner of your screen it means that a malfunction has ensued. You may see something like this:
The USB device is not recognized as the device connected to the PC malfunctioned so your Windows cannot recognize it.
If you see this prompt, don’t be alarmed as many before you have faced the same problem. There is a solution revealed in this article to this problem.
Before you dive into the solution part, there are several possibilities why this error may have occurred that you need to knwo first. It may be one of these:
Although several conditions may have necessitated the error there are general solutions that you can try first before the need arises to call in technicians. The solutions here are free and work for the most part so take your time to follow each through. At least one is bound to work for you.
Here are 4 methods to solve this problem. You can try these solutions one by one, and find the most effective ones.
First, try a different USB port so see if the issue will be resolved. If you use a computer, try connecting the USB to the port located behind the computer case as the backport has a stronger electric current than the others
If you use a laptop instead, unplug the USB drive from its port and try another one to see if it will work. Also, avoid using USB Hubs because hubs may sometimes lack sufficient current to power the drive. It is better to plug directly into the system.
If the issue is resolved after changing port it means the port you used before is faulty.
If the first method does not work, you may need to update all your device drivers in case any of them is outdated, faulty, or missing. Make sure you verify that your drivers are working well and to do this you will have to update them either manually or automatically.
To update drivers use our Device Manager but if this fails, log on to the manufacturer website of your device for user Support. Search for compatible drivers on their site although this may take some time you will certainly find the correct driver for your system. When you find it, download it on your system by clicking the download link provided. Once the drivers have been downloaded, Microsoft will install them on your device.
If you lack the skills or the patience to do the update manually you can complete the process automatically using a 3rd party application like Driver Easy or ant other Automatic driver update program. After downloading the program, launch it and scan for missing, outdated, or faulty drivers. From the list of drivers provided, click each one enables the program to update or replace them one after the other. The update program will scan the web for compatible drivers and install them automatically.
With a selective Suspend feature, you can allocate USB ports of your choice to saving mode like when your PC is on sleep mode. For users of Desktop computers, this feature is unnecessary since it always plugged to a power source. Suspended Setting could be a culprit but it can be disabled all the same.
*Do note that on laptops you have to click the battery icon then disable it from the menu.
Check if USB is recognizable now. If this doesn’t work proceed to the next method.
A corrupted driver can also cause this kind of problem so try re-enabling drivers again.
For all drivers marked with a yellow exclamation mark do this
If you don’t see any driver marked yellow continue
Once you are done, your USB will be recognized.
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Sue Wayne
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