Recently my PC Windows XP home sp3 dell 4700 ram 4 gigs has being giving issues regarding assign drive letters to USB devices. the problem only affect flash based devies. eg if I plug in a usb hdd it install and assigns the drive letter with no issue. however if it flash based it installed but no drive letter is assigned. I tried a number of different flash keys(all work fine on other pc's) on each of the usb ports with no look. i also tryied formatting the ubs keys as well as uninstalling the drivers for them and no luck. I can use drive management to manually assign one. but length of files sizes and names are restricted. the problem first occured when sp3 corrupted amy windows install and I was unable to use a restore point. So had to use an old dell xp disk with sp1 to repair the system and re installing sp3 it was from then on this issue started any help is appreciated
So you are successful when using disk management to assign a drive letter? Sounds like a problem with SP3.
yes there no issues when using external harddrives or other usb devices. just usb flash keys and disk management works to assign the drive letter to them. but files name are restrict to a set length(but the ones already on the keys remain unaffect). I first notices when I use the xp disk with service pack 1( only one I had came with the pc) to repair the setup which sp3 corrupet and the problem remained after updating it back up to the latest build.