Troubleshoot: USB Device not recognized in Windows

[Jack Hackett]

If you try to access data on an external USB hard drive and you receive the following error:

"USB Device not recognized: One of the devices attached to this computer has malfunctioned and windows does not recognize it."

You may want to have a look at KB2654149 to resolve the issue.

This issue can be caused if any of the following situations exist:

* The currently loaded USB driver has become unstable or corrupt
* Your PC requires an update for issues that may conflict with a USB external hard drive and Windows
* Windows may be missing other important updates hardware or software issues
* Your USB controllers may have become unstable or corrupt
* Your external drive may be entering selective suspend
* Your PC motherboard may need updated drivers.

[pete]

You can add Your external drive may be kernackered. I have just had exactly this message come up and the drive itself has most definitely had it.

[Deleted]

I get that Jack, very occasionally and intermittently, with one of my external HDDs connected via USB3.
If I disconnect the USB lead, then reconnect it, the PC then recognises the drive and all is well. It might go a few weeks before it does it again, so I've never investigated further. Should I ?

[kings3]

I get this every now and again with only USB 3, mainly my external media reader ( kingston) & one of my 2 external hard drives, which the one in question is USB3. Un-plugging it and attaching it again usually quick fixes it, but it will somewhere down the line do it again. A number of things could go wrong with external hard drives, but you would hear it before it went wrong or it would not show up most of the time and no way to fix it. I simply do not like the default action for a hard drive to go to sleep when not in use. Drivers are another thing, when you clean install windows, windows looks for drivers to get you up and running, that means vga driver/lan driver/usb drivers etc... But you have a desktop and have downloaded the up to date mobo drivers from their website, which would be better for you, and install them before microsoft offer these drivers, it would be an ideal world. Less buggy. Thats what I liked about XP, you could not get online until you put in the lan driver, which gave you the time before microsoft looking to give you drivers. But since windows 7, that is not the case. I mean can you imagine how many drivers you have on your system over the years.