I FIXED IT!
I opened regedit, went to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices and deleted all entries containing "U.S.B.S.T.O.R..." in the right side of the value data box. Rebooted, plugged in a USB drive and it instantly showed up in Windows Explorer. I'm so glad to have this out of my hair...
Manually assigning drive letters is one of the first things I tried; however, none of the usb drives show up in disk management even though they appear in the device manager. Nothing about this behavior makes any sense.
I have tried ALL the ports, USB 2.0 and 3.0. It makes no difference. Nothing in the device manager is yellow or red. The strange part is the usb drives show up in the device manager, but they don't appear in windows explorer.
MB: Asus M4A88T-V EVO/USB3
CPU: Phenom II X2 555 4.1 GHz OC
RAM: 8GB (4*2GB) G.Skill Ripjaws
GPU: XFX HD6870
Crucial M500 240GB SSD for OS and programs
WD Blue HDD 1TB for storage and backup
No, I've never had this problem before.
The hardware components are from 2011 but it was last reformatted in March 2016, so this install of Windows 7 is less than a year old. The problem started out of the blue between 1 and 2 weeks ago. Yes, Windows updates are current.
I just ran sfc /scannow. After completing, it said "Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations."
I also tried disabling my antivirus (Avira Pro) and connecting a USB drive. Still nothing.
I just remembered, about a week or two ago, I had to change the power options to...
USB 3.0 in 3.0 ports does not show up. USB 3.0 in 2.0 ports does not show up. USB 2.0 in 3.0 ports does not show up. And lastly, USB 2.0 in 2.0 ports does not show up. USB version is not the issue.
"WAG"?
Also, if it was the motherboard USB drivers, wouldn't ALL my USB devices be...
When I plug a USB flash drive into my computer, it makes the normal sound like when a USB device is plugged in but the USB drive doesn't appear in the Windows Explorer. All other USB devices seem to function properly (headset, mouse, keyboard, bluetooth adapter, etc.). My OS is Windows 7 x64...
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