“If it won’t work at all after formatting, as experienced by the o/p, what then?”
Then maybe it won’t work on the desktop machine anymore. At which point you will then need to replace the flashdrive and start over.
Are you sure the desktop is a 64 bit version of Windows 7 and not a 32 bit version?
What files, if any, are currently on the flashdrive? When you remove the flashdrive from the desktop machine do you use Windows Safely Remove function or do you just yank it out?
