I have a flash drive installed but there is no file showing to drag & drop into on MY COMPUTER. Please help!

Is this a new drive? If so you need to format it under Disk Management.

Right click My Computer then click Manage then Disk Management.

Then right click in the right area of the display box for the drive and choose Format.

I have tried this already, it is only showing my C:\ drive and my cd rom drive. I have asked someone else to check on their pc and it is functioning fine. I have read somewhere that I should change my cd rom drive to x or something, would this work do you think? or any other pointers? This seems to be a common problem reading posts on various other sites and on this one. By the way, thank you so much for trying to help me, I really appreciate it.

oh, i just realised, it is a card reader/writer with a 1gb memory card in it, not a flash drive, but its basically the same thing really isnt it.

Do any other USB devices work?

When you plug this in does XP indicate (ding dong) that an USB device has been found?

If not try repeatedly plugging/unplugging/plugging till you get an audio signal (ding dong) which indicates that XP has detected this device.

If you do not get this make sure that your Plug and Play Service is started and set to Automatic.

start Run... services.msc

ok, the situation now is.....

I have got it working correctly via usb port at the rear of my tower, however this is really inconvenient as it interfears with all the rest of the wires. Is there any way I can change the usb port to one at the front of my tower??? Both ports at the front are working fine as I have just checked them by plugging in my mp3 player.

When you plug into the front port do you get the signal that XP recognizes a device?

There is the possibility that your front ports are not capable of handling such devices. One issue might be power and another that the case wiring is not sufficient for this type of data transfer. Also perhaps the front ports are not USB 2.0. Of course I am just speculating.

Given that this drive works in the rear port and that the front ports do work on other devices. The ports are good and the drive is good. The difference between the front ports and the rear ports would be the case wiring and a direct power source which the rear ports take straight from the motherboard.

If this is the case then you could get a powered USB hub to plug into the rear port and have this on your desktop.

Just to reiterate my crude suggestion of plug/unplug/plug a few times. I have some USB devices which require this at times when I use front ports. I don't know if it is the port or the plug but sometimes they work and other times not.