Vista and problem with storage devices connected through USB

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Generally speaking I like Vista. I think that as a system for my main laptop machine it works really OK. I haven’t any hardware or BSOD problems till now (except problem with connecting my Canon SLR camera – BTW Canon has released updated drivers for Vista), maybe I was just lucky. However from time to time I had a problem with connecting USB storage devices. Some of them were not recognized and stays in the system as unknown devices, while some of them were working perfectly.  It wasn’t a huge problem so I haven’t bothered myself with it much. Until today …
Maybe it’s hard to believe but today I’ve got the situation in which I had to copy few gigs of data (three virtual machines) and there was no network, nobody has DVD – only solution was USB external drive, and of course it wasn’t recognized by my system. So I had to find a solution.
If You will run into such problem You can try to do following:

  1. Plug Your device and cancel installation wizard.
  2. Go to Device manager, select device and choose to update driver
  3. Select option to show driver location and choose %systemroot%\system32, make sure to select sub-folder search option
  4. Enjoy Your device.

Annoying bug? Maybe, I hope it will get fixed.

BTW if we are on Vista tips. Few days ago Dean has shared on ActivDir.org list a tip how to create folder with all network connection within your start menu in Vista. You want to have a folder instead of Connect To option –  just go and create folder named:

Network Connections.{7007ACC7-3202-11D1-AAD2-00805FC1270E}

within Start menu on your file system. “Network connection” part is only description – You can change this. Credits goes to Dean.