Vista - Problem with San Disk thumb drive and vista

I have a San Disk 4GB Cruzer Micro thumb drive with U3 on it. I had orginally gotten the drive when I had a HP that was running Windows XP. It worked fine on that computer. Well the XP machine took a crap and was replaced with a Compaq that is running Vista Home. The drive was NOT inserted with the HP crashed.

Now when I insert the Thumb drive into a usb port it lights up and shows in "my computer" as an Audio CD with a drive letter of "H". The Launchpad does not start and the password screen does not come up either. The directory of the drive only shows 1 file (which does not open) and there was aprox 1000 files on it before.

San Disk has been no help and I have not been able to find anything on the internet that has helped. Oh did I mention that I have very little computer knowledge, .

I normally would not be to ticked about this but all the files on the drive are family photos, photo's of hunting trips etc. I know my fault for not saving them to a CD and relying on a thumb drive but I thought they were more reliable than this.

Here is a little twist, I have another Sandisk thumb drive that was used with the XP machine but this one works on the vista machine!

I havent been able to try the drive that I am having trouble with on another XP machine as I dont have access to one (work switched all computers to vista).

I dont know if it is a formatting issue or what but I can not figure it out. Anyone have any idea's?????

Thanks in advance,
J-

U3 may not be set to autorun (or may not be a vista Compatable Version- see post below), and If you have it password protected, this must be run to access the data.

Insert the drive, go to "computer", and run the U3 luanchpad.

cool thanks for the info. I'll have to find a XP machine to get into the drive and disable the password. When I tried to update the drive from the website it advised that the drive was locked and could not continue untill password was entered, but the password box does not pop up.

Also when I click on the drive I dont even get the choice of "Run U3 Launchpad" option.

I'll see what I can do when I get into the drive.

Thanks
J-

Another issue is that the U3 software may need to be updated to a Vista compatable version. I had to do this with my "red" Sandisk cruzer drive as it was bought before the vista capable versions were released.
When I upgraded to Vista, Launchpad would not run (and I had password enabled). I had to re-insert it into a XP machine, remove the password, and then update the U3 software. Now I have no problems in Vista.

Go to U3.com, and download the program for your drive.
http://software.u3.com/SoftwareCentral.aspx?skip=1

Download SanDisk U3 removal tool and Installer here:
http://www.sandisk.com/DriverDownload/index.asp

Copy thanks, thats what I figured what I would have to do. Thanks

J-

Rive, thanks for all the info. I was able to find a computer with XP on it at work and disabled the security on my drive. Brought it home and followed the link/instructions that you provided and I am back up and running. All my pics are there and accessible on my computer now. Thanks again a ton!

J-