Windows 7 does not detect USB mass storage devices anymore

Question

In an attempt to get a WD USB HDD to work I followed a suggestion to uninstall all devices of type Mass Storage using USBDeview. Now, Windows 7 does not show any mass storage device, even the ones that worked previously. For example, a connected USB pen drive is listed in USBDeview as not connected:

In the Device Manager it appears with an exclamation mark:

It is not shown at all in Disk Managment.

I already tried reinstalling my ThinkPad T420si's Intel chipset drivers, but to no avail.

How do I get USB mass storage to work again?

Solution 1

Someone pointed me to a post in sevenforums.com by Difusal. After following the steps in the post, I deleted the entry with the exclamation mark in the Device Manager, then replugged the device. The mass storage driver installed automatically, and the drive is now detected.

Steps, copied from the aforementioned forum post, reformatted and with typos and spelling corrected:

1. Open Windows Explorer.

2. Go to C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore.

   You will have a couple of folders and files.

   You will have *.dat files and another file named: infcache.1

3. Right click every file (don't touch the folders!) and choose properties.

4. Go to the Security tab.

5. Click Edit.

6. Choose your account and check the box: Full Control (see ss)

7. Click OK.

8. Repeat for every file.

9. Select all the files (*.dat and infcache.1).

10. Press Shift + Del.

11. Click OK.

12. Now, go to C:\Windows\System32\Driver Store\File Repository.

13. Search folders containing usbstor.inf.

14. Open it (if you have more than one, choose the most recent).

15. Copy usbstor.inf and usbstor.PNF.

16. Paste those two files to C:\Windows\inf.

17. Reboot your PC and voilà! :b

Solution 2

Find the hardware ID of the device by right clicking on the device selecting properties and navigating to Details then hardware ids in the drop-down menu.

Take the top one and search it on Google preferably. See if you can find the corresponding device or if your lucky, the recommended driver for the device and download that from the support page of lenovo.

Comments

[DavidPostill]

System Restore?

[DavidPostill]

Why can people answer a question before being able to comment?

[Xander]

Essentially what I have to do is post a full response instead of a request. So I cant do tiered support until I hit 50 but I can post simple fixes in the answers category. I edited my earlier post to show a full response, does that comply with your rules?

[DavidPostill]

Yes. And they are not my rules. They are the community rules. I've inlined the image for you.

[DavidPostill]

You are welcome. It won't take long to get 50 rep if you keep writing good questons and answers.

[feklee]

This is not helpful as mine is a general problem, not one specific to one mass storage device.

[BlueWizard]

@DavidPostill as a stackexchange beginner you cant comment. The need of Karma to comment is a real thing that bugs me because you only are able to "Answer" when you are new on this page. And yes I know that this something i should talk about in Meta

[DavidPostill]

@JonasDralle This has already been discussed on meta many many times. See Why can people answer a question before being able to comment? for just one example.