my sandisk usb drive isnt reconised by windows please help

hi i bought a sandisk  cruzer edge 16gb sdcz51 about 6 months ago and its been fine up until before i put it in my laptop and it would come up as 1 of my drives in my computer. i took it out and put it back in and i got this msg…one of the usb devices atached to this computer has malfunctioned, and windows does not recognise it.

ive tried deleting the drivers through device manager and reinstalling them. yet it says that it has all the right drivers installed. this happens on 2 of my laptops (win7+vista) and also my desktop (vista) ever since it went funny today. any help with this is greatly appreciated as i need this usb device for both school and work.

thanks in advance k.clark.

I suspect the device was not Safely Removed from one of the Windows environments and now the drive’s FAT is screwed up.  You can try running a CHKDSK on it, it may help.  If not, and your files are important to you, take it to a drive recovery service.  Then return it to the place where you bought it or to SanDisk for a replacement device.

how do i run a CHKDSK on it? and the files are not really important to me so if i can slove this problem by formating it that would be fine.problem is the computer wont recognise it for me to do anything. in my usb ports in device manager it says unkown device. i also bought this item off ebay so i carnt take it back the shop. any help would be great,thanks.

I think it’s time to buy a new device.  Sorry.

BTW Some of the devices sold on e-Bay are counterfeit.  A quality USB device should certainly last longer than 6 months.

arr gutted. thanks for your help anyway! :wink: