I have a Dell Vostro 410. Its a few years old now and I have noticed that more and more it doesn't read my USB memory sticks!
I have 4 ports and after plugging them into all of them a few times it finally reads it

what would cause this? as it always reads it in the end but very rarely does it read it straight away

I have found that noname flashdrives are difficult for a PC to read. I think it has to do with the thumbdrive having a low grade onboard memory controller whereas name brand flash drives light up almost instantly.

Also, an older motherboard chipset may have difficulty reading a newer USb stick simply because the bios may be lacking in older model motherboards. Some times a bios update fixes this issue and sometimes not.

Older tech doesn't always play well with newer gear.............

Thanks for that, interesting

Hi,

I had the same problem with the PC at work, so here's what u can do to solve the problem:

Connect the USB Stick in any port, than go to: Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Disk Management

Scroll down until you see your USB Drive, right click on it and select " Change Drive Letter and Paths..." than click on "Change..."

Make sure that "Assign the following drive letter:" is selected and on the right side choose any letter you like ( i usually start from the end of the alphabet which would be Z )

Now every time you plug in a USB drive it will be recognized as drive Z.

Hope it helps

Thanks very much for that