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Your PC requires an update for issues that may conflict with a USB external hard drive and Windows. The currently loaded USB driver has become unstable or corrupt.
This issue can be caused if any of the following situations exist: USB Device not recognized: One of the devices attached to this computer has malfunctioned and windows does not recognize it.Īpplies to: Windows 10, version 1709, Windows 7 Service Pack 1 Original KB number: 2654149 Cause When you try to access data on an external USB hard drive, you may receive the following error: This article provides methods to solve the USB Device not recognized error that occurs when you try to access a USB external hard drive. Hope this helps someone."USB Device not recognized" error when you try to access a USB external hard drive TLDR: Going into BIOS to "reset to default" on my USB device, though it didn't appear to change anything, seemed to do the trick.
I re-attempted to format my USB drive, and this time it was detected properly and everything worked. I then saved and exited and restarted my machine.
Literally nothing changed on the settings screen, but something magical happened. This time it detected my storage correctly in there, but I pressed the key to "reset to default" anyway.
I tried again, this time making sure the USB stick was plugged in before I rebooted, instead of plugging it in after. I rebooted and went into my BIOS and tried to open the device information for my USB storage device. Then I got a wild urge to try something else. I had previously tried unplugging and replugging it, switching ports, rebooting, reformatting the USB stick, installing drivers, downloading and running promised snake oil cures from a variety of shady software sites suggested in various forums. I inserted USB stick, encountered all the usual issues (can't format, 0B size, "there is no media in the device," etc.). I was able to overcome the problem in a marvelously derpy way though: I ran into the same issue, but none of the proposed solutions fixed it. I've seen this reposted in a LOT of places: