Flash Memory Device Driver
Aug 13,2019 • Filed to: USB Recovery • Proven solutions
Flash memory has become virtually indispensable in most mobile devices. In order for mobile devices to operate successfully, it is essential that flash memory be controlled correctly through the device driver software. However, as is typical for embedded software, conventional testing methods often fail to detect hidden flaws. Download the latest drivers, firmware, and software for your HP v120w USB Flash Drive.This is HP’s official website that will help automatically detect and download the correct drivers free of cost for your HP Computing and Printing products for Windows and Mac operating system.

Why is my USB not recognized?
How do I fix USB Flash Drive not recognized?
You may confuse about the USB not showing up and got the error of 'USB Device Not Recognized' when you connect a USB drive to the Windows computer. Why and how to fix USB drive is not working in Windows? On this you can learn what is the reason caused your USB drive not recognized, and learn how to access to the drive and get your data back with Recoverit USB Data Recovery software.
Why Windows Won't Recognize USB Device
There can be many reasons why Windows did not detect your flash drive. When users face problems with USB drive not showing up, most people believe that their drive is dead. However, this is only the worst-case scenario.
There may be a problem with your computer hardware or with Windows itself which may cause a flash drive not detected error. For instance, if your USB ports are dead, if there are partition issues on your external drive, if you have been using the wrong file system or if there are driver issues in Windows, a USB drive won’t show up.
- Unknown device, descriptor request failed, error code 43
- One of the devices attached to this computer has malfunctioned, and Windows does not recognize it. For assistance in solving this problem, click this message
- Drive did not load successfully
- The device you connected to this computer malfunctioned, and Windows does not recognize it
- USB device not recognized Windows 10/7
- Unknown drive, port reset failed
How to Fix USB Flash Drive Not Working in Windows
To computer not recognizing USB error in Windows, you must first determine the cause of the problem. Here are some solutions you can try out:
The most first solution to fixed the error, you can restart your PC computer and reconnect it to the PC. Second, you should plug the USB drive to another computer, if the error still happened again, the drive is broken and need to repair. Last, what if you connect many USB devices to the same computer, you should try to plug out other UBS devices and check, if the drive doesn’t work, you may follow the next solutions to fix windows not recognizing USB.
1. Check your USB Ports
If your USB ports are not functioning properly, Windows won’t detect your USB flash drive. To check your USB ports,
- Navigate to Start > Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Device Manager > Universal Serial Bus
- Click on Uninstall
- Click on Scan for Hardware Changes
Pci Flash Memory Device Driver
If Windows still doesn’t recognize your device after these steps, your USB ports are faulty.
2. Update your Device Drivers
If your device drivers are outdated, Windows computer won't recognizing USB. To update the drivers manually as follow:
- Navigate to Start > Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Device Manager > Universal Serial Bus
- Check to see if any device is listed as 'Unknown Device'
- If yes, right click on the Unknown Device > Properties > Driver
- Click on Update Drivers
- Go to Settings, and click on Update & Security.
- By clicking on Windows Update and click the Check for updates button.
For Windows 7:
For Windows 10:
You can get more specific steps to update drives on Window 10.
These steps will update your device drivers. If your error was caused due to outdated drivers, it would be fixed.
3. Change Power Management Settings
The power management settings in Windows 10 can also cause a flash drive not showing up the problem. To solve this issue,
- Navigate to Start > Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Device Manager > Universal Serial Bus
- Double click on the first 'USB Root Hub' that you see
- Navigate to the Power Management tab
- Uncheck the option 'Allow this computer to turn off this device to save power.' Click on OK.
- Please repeat these steps above mentioned for each USB Root Hub device in your list of Universal Serial Bus controllers
This will solve the power management issue that may cause Windows not to recognize a flash drive.
4. Updating Windows System
To update the Windows system on Windows 7 would help the computer to recognize a USB device, follow these steps:
- Go to Control Panel > System and Security;
- Next, users need to make sure that the 'Check for updates' option is selected;
- The Windows system will be updated.
- Then, users need to restart the system and connect the flash drive to make sure that the issue is solved.
This will fix issues with your USB root hub, and hopefully, Windows will recognize your flash drive.
5. Format your USB Drive
If you’ve tried all the above and nothing works, then your USB drive may be faulty. You’ll need to format USB drive to get it to work again. To format USB drive,
- Navigate to Windows Disk Management tool
- Right click on your USB device on the list of all disks and click on format
Important: Formatting will erase all data from your USB drive. Make sure to restore and backup your data before you try formatting your USB device. If you can't access your USB drive data and backup data files, you still can restore your data back as following solution:
Recover Data after Fixing a USB Flash Drive Not Working Error
After fixing USB device malfunctioned and not recognized error in Windows, if the above mentioned solution can help you and worked, you can get a USB drive data recovery program to help you access the drive and get your data back.
Recoverit Data Recovery can help you recover data from USB flash drive, even the device got corrupted or damaged, or formatted. The software can access to the drive and recover data back.
Steps on How to Recover Data from not Working USB Drive
Step 1. Launch Recoverit USB Flash Drive Recovery program, select the USB drive which detected on the software to get started.
Step 2. The USB recovery software will start scanning the device, it will take for a while to searching the lost data.
Step 3. At the end, you can check all recovered data and files. Preview recovered photos, videos, audios, Word, Excel, PPT and PDF files. Select your USB files and click 'Recover' button save them to a safe device path.
Video Tutorial on USB Drive Data Recovery
Flash Memory Device Driver Download
There are many reasons why Windows may fail to recognize a USB device. It can be because of problems with computer hardware, with Windows or with the flash drive itself. Make sure to determine the cause of USB not recognized issue before you format your drive.
USB Solution
- Recover USB Drive
- Format USB Drive
- Fix/Repair USB Drive
- Know USB Drive
A flash drive consists of a PCB that is, a printed circuit board. It is covered in a plastic or rubber casing, which makes it sturdy. A USB connector that protrudes out is covered with a removable cap. Most flash drives use type-A USB connection making them compatible with standard type-A receptacles. Hence they can be connected directly to a port on your computer.
Flash drives implement the USB mass storage device class, thus they do not require any additional device drivers. When a flash drive is plugged into a computer, what is presented to the computer's operating system is a block-structured logical unit. This achieves abstraction from the complex implementation details of flash memory devices and the OS can use any file system or block addressing system. In short, the operating system treats it like a hard drive. Once plugged in, a flash drive enters the emulation mode which means it emulates a hard drive thereafter. This makes data transfer between the flash drive and your computer much easier.
During the early years of their evolution, flash drives could not survive too many erase cycles. This made earlier flash drives unsuitable for data needing frequent updates. To fill this lacuna, vendors devised wear-leveling techniques that relocate writes to physical memory locations. Today's devices are made to survive a larger number of erases.
- Connect the flash drive to your computer.
- The computer will indicate to you that it has detected an external device.
- As flash drives implement USB mass storage device class (UMS), the operating system treats them like any other hard drive. No special device drivers are needed. No specific file system is required.
- Go to 'My Computer' and you will see the flash drive among other drives.
- You will be able to access it like any other hard drive.
✔ They are robust. They are shock and scratch-resistant and unaffected by magnetic fields.
✔ Flash memory is non-volatile.
✔ They are plug-and-play devices, thus easy to use.
✔ A computer treats them like any other hard drive, thus making data transfer easy.
✘ Frequent use subjects them to wear and tear, especially at their point of connection with a computer.
✘ There is a limit to the number of write and erase cycles they can sustain.
✘ Sharing a flash drive between different computers makes it susceptible to infection. A virus in the drive can render its data corrupted or unreadable.