Non-Working Cruzer Flash Drive

Meat Plow wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@news.alt.net:

so when does a USB device NOT get recognized as hardware when plugged into a USB port? How's that work??

(under Windows,not some other op system)

I sent email to the author and just got a reply. He's tried to get AVG to do something about the false positive. No luck.

When it's just powered by the 5VDC on the USB jack. My LED night light runs on USB power and doesn't get recognized by Windoze. Same with my USB massager:

However, a USB memory device will need to be recognized by Windoze in order to work, so my examples don't really count.

I wonder if Windoze will recognize this USB device?

When it fails to communicate with the hotplug/automount hal daemon. Do you think a USB flash drive Fairy sees your device being plugged in then flips a magic switch inside your PC?

Actually now it's done the same way in Linux and should be the same in any OS running a hald with hotplug.

And no it doesn't hold true for everything plugged into a USB port, just a NAND or NOR type EEPROM flash drive that was asked of in the original subject.

Jeff Liebermann wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

SHEESH,those are NOT personal computer devices. you're just tapping the USB power supply. Use some common sense,man.

Meat Plow wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@news.alt.net:

IOW,you have NO answer,and don't know. You should man up and just say so.

Eveything that's a PC I/O USB device.(stuff that's MEANT for a PC to use.) Not the power tappers like Lieberman cited.

Ah, so that's your intent. You really couldn't give a s*it about how it works huh? Just that I'm wrong or have no answer :)

Tell you what f*****ad, it's you who doesn't know. Go Google and read how flash storage works then apologize for your stupidity when you laughably compared flash storage to that of a spinning drive LOL!

Read the part above where I said Google. The way this s*it is evolving there really isn't one answer that can cover it from the time the USB flash drives appeared to today's flash drives.

Nice creative snipping there Yankit.

Meat Plow wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@news.alt.net:

So,essentially,you won't provide supporting evidence(instead wanting ME to do that),and further resort to name calling,indicating you've lost the argument.

I mean really! The poster cited a USB overcurrent message. Do we really need to guess what kind of flash drive would give an overcurrent message. I could see this kind of thing with a portable Hard Drive. Gee, why not try plugging it into one of the rear ports and see if it will pull the power supply down? Lol! I like the joke about "too close to bodily fluids!" Something about Cruisers and Hot Pockets!

Hmm. Avira reports nothing, and I've been using it for quite awhile with no problems. I uploaded the file to

Anyway, I think you're right about the false positive.

On Fri, 19 Jun 2009 14:18:02 +1000, Bob Larter put finger to keyboard and composed:

I've always seen it called "wear leveling".

- Franc Zabkar

On Sat, 20 Jun 2009 09:16:16 -0400, Meat Plow put finger to keyboard and composed:

AIUI, this MS utility will retrieve information from any USB device, file system or no file system, even without any drivers being installed:

The device also reports its maximum rated current demand.

- Franc Zabkar

On Thu, 18 Jun 2009 22:23:23 +0100, Baron put finger to keyboard and composed:

There looks to be a 3-terminal linear 3.3V (?) regulator at the rear of the PCB in this example:

I wonder if it could be a possible suspect.

BTW, the NAND flash memory IC, K9K2G08U0M, is a 3.3V part:

- Franc Zabkar

Nice little program, hard to believe it was written by MS. Thanks.

If that device is indeed a 3.3V regulator it would definitely be suspect. In the dead ones I've played around with there has never been any markings to identify the small components.

On Mon, 29 Jun 2009 09:08:35 -0400, JW put finger to keyboard and composed:

Maybe it was too good. MS appears to have removed it from their site. In fact it's very hard to find it anywhere ... except on my web space.

For some reason the USB vendor IDs are encoded within the EXE file. I've managed to decipher the code and have published the list here:

- Franc Zabkar

Yep, my mistake.

Note that this is not the actual current drain. It's the maximum current specified by the manufactory when it was registered.

It's not UVCview.exe. That's a Quickcam tool. It should be called USBview.exe. An old version of USBview can be found on the Windoze 98 CD under the tools directory. It might be on the ME disk, but I don't have one handy to check.

There are bugs:

The latest bug fixed release is mixed in with the Server 2003 DDK (driver development kludge) SP1. See:

All you have to do is download 230MBytes of driver development stuff, in order to extract the lastest file. I'm tempted.

Nice. Thanks.

On Tue, 30 Jun 2009 01:35:06 -0700, Jeff Liebermann put finger to keyboard and composed:

UVCView, despite the deceptive name, appears to detect all USB devices, regardless of type. USBview, which I have on my site, is a much earlier utility.

I have seen two versions of it, one on the Win98 CD, another one on the Web.

Here are the Properties of UVCView:

File Version:

Description: Microsoft® Windows(TM) USB device viewer

Copyright © Microsoft Corporation 1996-2005.

Internal Name: UVCView

Original filename: UVCView.EXE

I downloaded my copy from Microsoft's web site many years ago. In subsequent years references to it remained on the MS site, but no download. Now it appears that all references point to an updated USBview, as you say.

If you do, please let me have a copy. I'd like to extract the latest vendor IDs.

- Franc Zabkar