netbook not recognising usb stick

[DRPistoh]

I have a samsung netbook it no longer recognises usb flash drive I have checked on attached devices on device manager and no usb appears but the same flash drives are working fine with other devices.

I have tried system restore to a date usb were working fine but still that could not solve the issue.

please help guys

[irneb]

Do other USB connected devices work on that same port? It may be that the controller is defective or that the connector plates have worn out (tends to happen on older laptops once you've plugged in and removed USBs 1000s of times).

Otherwise, is your other devices using the same (or similar) operating systems? I'm thinking it may be that the USB stick is formatted somehow which your laptop's OS (probably Windows) doesn't understand. I've seen this sometimes with devices running Android/Linux/iOS/OSX they default to formats such as EXT4/HFS+ which Windows simply does not have the capabilities of using (not without 3rd party drivers). For ease of use the format should be FAT32 (though Windows disallows discs larger than 30GB from using it), else NTFS tends to be well supported by other OSs, exFAT not so much.

You do mention that you don't see the drive even in Device Manager ... that does sound strange, though I've also seen Windows tends to have issues if an external disc's partitions are mapped to extended partitions (not just the main 4 primary ones). It should at least display here even if formatted in something Windows doesn't understand. But more likely it could be a driver issue (something like the USB controller drivers), perhaps something corrupted on your laptop (even an update with a bug in it). Try to find the latest drivers from the manufacturer's site - don't let Windows try to use the drivers from Microsoft's site.