USB and Media Cards seen but not available

[mel.holmes.948]

My Win7-64bit has suddenly stopped giving me access to external USB drives and SD cards. I can see a list when I go to Disconnect Hardware (only generic - no identification of device). I can disconnect them, but I can't explore them. I have reinstalled all USB drivers. I also have a Win8 installation (trial) in which they all work perfectly - so it's not hardware. What can it be?

[scudzilla]

By not available, do you mean they are not visible in explorer, or visible but inaccessible?

[mel.holmes.948]

They are not visible in Explorer (my computer) but are listed in the Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media in the system tray, but only as HD and HDD and Card. No media specific data.

[mel.holmes.948]

Discovered that USB printer connection works fine

[Xlphos]

Hello,

Can you see the devices under the disk manager?
click start and type disk manager and select create and format partitions.

The devices should be listed there also with partition information.

-Let us know how it goes

[mel.holmes.948]

It seems to all mass storage devices. They are listed without error in device manger under disc drives, but all have error 39 lower down under the heading Storage Volumes. In Disk Management they are all present and correct but the Explore option is greyed out and any attemp to get Properties etc results in the message, The operation failed to complete beacsue the console view is not up to date.....

I have tried various solution realting code 39 after Googling the message, bu none has worked. It is definitely a Win7/driver problem, as they all work fine in my Win8 Consumer Preview installation on the same machine.