I learned the hard way today that my memory stick doesn't take kindly to being formatted. It got what seemed to me to be a virus of sorts because there were files that I could see in XP but not in WinCrap 7. WinNC would see them in W7 but Explorer wouldn't. So I tried to format the device on the W7 machine and nothing much happened. I then formatted the device on the XP machine and it went splat. When I insert the stick it comes up as a USB MEMORY BAR device. Ok, so off to Google to figure this lot out. Seems the silly thing allowed its own firmware (which probably lives on the main NV memory of the stick) to get wiped by the format. It looks like there are tools available to replace the controller firmware and get the silly thing running again. Some R & D for another day. The bottom line to this lot is that lots of memory sticks are probably discarded because their controller firmware gets tossed....