USB-sticks don't work

[Xozz]

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

[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.

[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.

[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?

[rproffitt]

@Xozz, 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.

[Reverend Jim]

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

[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.