Unrecognized Kingston Data Traveler 8GB Windows 7

I have been struggling with a Kingston Data Traveler 8GB flash drive for nearly a week now.
It was a very strange problem and I thought it was a software driver issue with Windows 7 on one particular computer.

The drive worked fine on other computers, both Windows 7 and 8.  This ruled out any hardware issues with the flash drive itself - or so I thought.

New to FrugalNYC's FrugalTech?  Enjoy more free content by Clicking here to add this to your RSS reader or Subscribe to FrugalTech by Email.

After removing and uninstalling many unused drivers in windows device manager, I rebooted my pc a couple of times to be sure everything that is installed still worked properly.  After all this, the flash drive still did not work.

I tried all 4 usb ports at the front of my desktop pc and occassionally I would see a windows pop-up showing something was plugged in.  The drive never shows up in the computer's removable storage list.

Then I had a thought, something I've seen on rare occasions on this pc, what if the usb contacts are not doing it's job?  I've had other devices not work properly from time to time, but never with all the usb ports.  So I held the flash drive at a slight angle so the contacts would be closer to that of the pc's - voila! it worked!

I tested this several times, in the other ports and they all did the same thing.  I compared the USB flash drive contacts to others that do work on this pc and I noticed it does look slightly thinner than the others.  So I think it's a combination of the ports on this pc and device connectors.

THE FIX

I have three of these devices and two do not work on this pc, while one does.  It could be a manufacturing issue, but I do have a quick fix now.  I use a usb extension cord like the AmazonBasics USB 2.0 Extension Cable, and it works like a charm!

My other usb flash drives like the SanDisk Cruzer Blade 8GB or SanDisk Cruzer 16GB  do not have this issue.  I'm leaning toward a manufacturing quality control issue since the problem is not consistent and it does work on most other machines.

For additional links to tips and tricks follow me on Twitter. If you would like to contribute to FrugalNYC or FrugalTech in any way, contact me via email. Click here to add this to your RSS reader or Subscribe to FrugalTech by Email.