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Recently my pc stopped detecting usb pen drives. But my usb mouse/keyboards are working perfectly fine.

So I tried to check if it shows up in BIOS, I inserted my pen drive and restarted my system, system will show the motherboard logo and it will be stuck there until I remove my pendrive.

Also in my device manager, usb mass storage is hidden, I have to check the show hidden devices in view(device manager) to display usb mass storage.

Any ideas ? what could be wrong in my system.

Details of my PC 

OS : Windows 10 
Motherboard : Asrock H97m Pro4

I also formatted my system and tried installing windows 8.1, still same issue.

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  • do you know if your PC got stuck in the BIOS in the past when inserting a USB.. And whether it showed up in the BIOS before? have you tried different usb sticks in different slots?
    – barlop
    Commented Mar 29, 2018 at 14:31
  • what if when in windows you unplug the usb mouse and plug in the usb stick?
    – barlop
    Commented Mar 29, 2018 at 14:32
  • @barlop - previously I never tried to go to bios with usb inserted in my pc. I have tried different usb sticks nothing detects. I tried removing the usb mouse and inserting pen drive still no use.
    – Pரதீப்
    Commented Mar 29, 2018 at 16:14
  • it's seen many computers(maybe moreso 5-10 years back), that don't start up when a usb drive is in there.. though they can read the usb drive from within windows. How about you check "disk management" and see if that can see the USB? Sometimes a usb drive can be detected but given no drive letter and nothing pops up to say it was detected.
    – barlop
    Commented Mar 29, 2018 at 16:47
  • @barlop - Disk management is also not showing connected usb's
    – Pரதீப்
    Commented Mar 29, 2018 at 16:49

2 Answers 2

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  1. Does the problem occur on multiple USB-storage devices or only on one specific?
  2. Do you know whether this pen drive is USB-HDD or USB-FDD?

  3. Is the stick recognised in diskpart tool from Microsoft (open elevated command prompt by WIN-Key (start menu opens) > "cmd" > right click > run as administrator > enter amdinistrator credentials in UAC > type diskpart

    Warning: be extremely careful when using diskpart and never select disk 0!

    Now, after diskpart has started, type list diskto show all physical drives connected to your computer.
    If you know the size of your stick, you could identify it by the size. If your stick shows up, type select disk [no. of the stick in the list, e.g. disk 2]
    Double check you've got the right disk, before typing clean to delete everything on the selected disk.
    If this was succesful, type create partion primary and then active There should not be errors, but confirmation messages like "Partion is now the active partion".
    Last part: we need to format it using format fs=fat32 [or ntfs] label=Name[give the USB-stick a name or simply leave out label= command) quick
    If drive won't show up, try assign to (re)assign volume letters.

  4. Your BIOS could somehow be corrupt, but I won't recommend updating/flashing it unless you are 100% sure that this is necessary.

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  • 1. Issue is with all pendrives I connect. 2. I don't know, will check and update you. 2. Again didn't try that, will check and update. 4. I tried updating the bios, still no use.
    – Pரதீப்
    Commented Mar 29, 2018 at 16:16
  • As all USB-pendrives will not work, I think it won't be necessary to run diskpart. Your motherboard is definetely UEFI as AsRock shows on its homepage, so besides @Christopher Hostage's idea I could only imagine that you install a Windows with a MBR boot scheme but want to boot with UEFI, requiring a GPT partition table.
    – Yannik Z.
    Commented Mar 29, 2018 at 16:26
  • "I could only imagine that you install a Windows with a MBR boot scheme but want to boot with UEFI, requiring a GPT partition table" -- Sorry I didn't understood anything can you please elaborate or update you answer. One thing I can say is, pen drive was working fine suddenly it stopped working, its not like it was not working from the day of windows installation.
    – Pரதீப்
    Commented Mar 29, 2018 at 16:29
  • So, there are partition tables on each physical drive, telling the disk where partitions are located on the drive. Don't mistake a partition scheme with a file system though! So, legacy (commonly referred as BIOS) uses the Master Boot Record scheme while GUID Partition Table (GPT) is used mainly for UEFI. However, you can use an MBR for UEFI (as far as i know), but you can't use an GPT in legacy boot mode. Could you provide an image of the bootorder shown in your UEFI? (maybe via camera)
    – Yannik Z.
    Commented Mar 29, 2018 at 16:47
  • Right now am in office, will reach my home in 1 hour. Will provide clear screenshots
    – Pரதீப்
    Commented Mar 29, 2018 at 16:48
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It's possible that there's a legacy versus UEFI issue. UEFI is the modern mode, and motherboards may be set to it by default. If a motherboard is set to UEFI mode, it won't continue to boot from an NFTS drive, and usually won't show the drive in the list.

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  • I think this could be the issue. How to change from UEFI mode and set to legacy mode ?
    – Pரதீப்
    Commented Mar 29, 2018 at 16:17
  • Rereading your question, I realized that it's also not mounting in Windows. Something else is going on, perhaps the USB stick is formatted in a Macintosh format. Anyway, switching legacy vs UEFI will cause your PC to stop booting into what it was booting before. It's useful only if you're clean-formatting the PC and have nothing important on it. To boot into the BIOS, there's different methods for every make/model. On my Dell, if I press F2 repeatedly shortly after power-on, it enters the BIOS. It might be called "Setup" in the startup screen. After that, each BIOS is unique as well.
    – MountainMan
    Commented Mar 29, 2018 at 16:28
  • I know how to reach bios, after that what should I be looking for
    – Pரதீப்
    Commented Mar 29, 2018 at 16:30
  • Do you still want to use your current Windows installation?
    – MountainMan
    Commented Mar 29, 2018 at 16:33
  • No I don't want, I am ready to reinstall the windows to fix the issue
    – Pரதீப்
    Commented Mar 29, 2018 at 16:35

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