Member Avatar for Xozz

I have Windows 10 on a Lenovo T500. And no USB-stick works. How can this be solved? Thank you

  • 4 Contributors
  • 6 Replies
  • 411 Views
  • 4 Days Discussion Span
  • Latest Post Latest Post by Ricky_9

Dani AI

Generated

Practical follow-up (adds to suggestions from , and ):

If USB controllers and other peripherals work but removable thumb drives do not, Windows may be seeing the device at the controller level yet not mounting it. Causes not covered in the thread include: no drive letter assigned, an unsupported filesystem (Linux ext4 or damaged/RAW), the USB mass-storage driver/service blocked by policy or registry, power-management shutting the port off, or third‑party endpoint/DLP software interfering. On older hardware such as a Lenovo T500, missing vendor chipset/USB drivers can also cause odd mass-storage behavior even when generic controllers appear.

Concise checklist (in roughly the best order):

  • Insert the stick and open Disk Management (Win+X -> Disk Management). If the disk is visible but has no drive letter, use Change Drive Letter and Paths to add one. If it appears as RAW or an unknown filesystem, recover data before reformatting.
  • If the disk does not appear, open Device Manager -> View -> Show hidden devices and check under Disk drives and Universal Serial Bus controllers for USB Mass Storage or Unknown Device; uninstall the device and then Action -> Scan for hardware changes.
  • Check policy/registry that can block UsbStor: run gpedit.msc and inspect Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> System -> Removable Storage Access. Registry key of interest:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\UsbStor
Start = 3   ; 3 = enabled, 4 = disabled
  • Turn off USB selective suspend in Power Options or uncheck “Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power” on USB Root Hub properties.
  • If the stick uses a non-Windows filesystem or to inspect partitions, boot a Linux live image (as suggested) to check partition/contents before any reformat.

Caution: editing the registry or repartitioning can cause data loss — back up recoverable files first. If these checks fail, the exact Device Manager device name/error code and the System event-log entries are the next useful diagnostics.

Recommended Answers

All 6 Replies

Member Avatar for Reverend Jim

Do any other USB devices work? Are you able to boot from a Linux LiveCD or any other bootable USB? Have USB sticks ever worked on this particular machine? If not then USB may be disabled in the BIOS.

Edited by Reverend Jim
Member Avatar for rproffitt

The times I encounter this issue there are many causes. Unranked:

  1. The USB ports are disabled in the BIOS or by company policy. As it was company laptop we had to send them to their IT. Sometimes they get irate we won't help them crack their company laptop open.
  2. The user reinstalled the OS and didn't know the post OS install steps. Sorry no, I don't know the exact steps but the usual are drivers for the PC from the maker. Do not rely on Microsoft to get this right.
  3. Dead USB sticks. The sticks the owner had didn't work anywhere.
  4. Rare. So rare. There were a few PCs that were incompatible with W10 as there were no Chipset drivers. RARE. Doubt this applies.
Member Avatar for Xozz

The USB-drivers show up in device manager. Other devices work on USB. I have a couple of USB-sticks and they all don't work. Right now, the only thing I didn't try is the chipset story. By the way.. are you sure about that one? Windows 10 just runs here. Or do I misunderstand what you're saying?

Member Avatar for rproffitt

, just because the USB-drivers show up does not mean they are correct for this PC or the sticks are good or bad.

As to sure, the issue of drivers and Windows has been around for decades so I'm sure folk run into this all too often. Am I sure this is what's going on in your PC? No, I can't be sure but you can go over the drivers again and see if that's it. Figure 10 to 20 minutes tops for most folk that do this work. Others? Sadly a lot of folk can't deal with this area and I've seen them buy a new laptop to fix it.

Member Avatar for Reverend Jim

Try the stick(s) in another machine and see if they work there.

Member Avatar for Ricky_9

The company I used to work for installed software on ALL machines that prevented the use of WRITABLE USB devices. So sticks, USB hard drives and other such devices didn't work whereas READ-ONLY USB devices such as mice, microphone and, keyboards worked just fine. This restriction was part of their data loss prevention program and was also a HIPAA requirement.

The suggestions made above are good ones: 1) Try the sticks in other machines; and, 2) Try read-only devices in your machine. These two actions will help you narrow the source of the problem.

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.