Drive letters not showing up on My Computer for camera/card reader! please help!

[InNeed0fHelp]

I got a kodak camera for Christmas, and when i plugged it into my computer, i was hoping it would be as easy as> go to My Computer and go into camera and copy paste my pics and vids, but my camera does not create a drive letter. I know i have that drive letter activated, because i have a sandisk 4gb flash drive that always creates a drive letter (and i'm plugging them both into the same USB hub). I'm running Windows XP Pro on my pc, but when i plug my camera into my brother's Vista laptop, it shows up perfectly.
Then yesterday i got a card reader (hoping that would solve my problem), and the same exact thing is happening. I plug it in, and it does acknowledge that it's there (it says new device insatalled and when i go to device manager, it shows up there with name and all), but it just doesn't show up as a drive letter. The card reader also works perfectly on my brother's vista, but i don't see a reason it shouldn't work on xp pro. One interesting thing i found was when i go to device manager and properties on my card reader, teh version was years newer than when i device managered the reader on my pc. So i tried updating the drives, but it said it was unsuccessful (i assumed there weren't any newer drivers, but ... idk) can someone please help??? Thank you so much in advance...

Matt

 

[DerekC]

Welcome to TSG, InNeedOfHelp.

What happens if you don't use the hub, and plug the camera directly into the computer?

 

[InNeed0fHelp]

i'm sorry, i'm sorry, i didn't mean hub, it's just a normal USB on my comp. Any help?

 

[Elvandil]

Did you use any tweakers, like TweakUI for XP? You may have hidden certain drive letters that you were not using at the time. In any case, if that happened, you can unhide them with TweakUI for XP. Just toggle them hidden (if the boxes are not checked already), Apply, and then unhidden, Apply.

 

[iain_shannon]

Hi there - newbie to this site - so greetings to all...

Similar problem here - and can't work out what's happening. When for the 1st time I connected my new Toshiba 1TB external HDD via USB, the System Tray lit up and advised that new h/w had been added and I can see it when I double click on the 'Safely Remove Hardware' icon in Sys Tray BUT I don't see a drive letter in My Computer or even see the device listed under under Disk Management within Computer Management. Same issue for a standard USB Pen drive. I believe this issue to have just started. Can Spyware / Malware cause this? Need to get data backed up and then I'm doing an OS rebuild - but need to get the data off first...

Both the Toshiba HDD & the pen drive function perfectly on another laptop....

Anyone any ideas please....

System is Dell Inspiron 6400 2Gb on Win XP Pro SP3 with all patches.

Thanks in advance
Iain