Vista - usb mass storage

hi. you've probably seen this before but i'm new here so i'll just post it again. i have this memory stick: it's a 4GB cruezer, ready-boost compatible but i use it to transfer files from one computer to another. it worked until 2 days ago and now, all of a sudden, my systems don't recognise it anymore. i have both vista and xp and it works with neither of them. at first i thought it was the drivers but can that be the reason on both my rigs? i haven't tried much and i'm open to any suggestion. thanks in advance for your help. daniel

Do you here any sound when you plug it in? Like the USB connection sound, but slightly different?

If not, then worst case scenario is it might have died. Happened to mine a couple of months ago. They are fragile and can get zapped easily with things like an ESD.

no, i hear no sound, but the system "sees" it as a disk drive and tells me the disk can't be used until i format it........

It seems it's become corrupt then. I'm not sure if you can get any data off it (unless someone knows a way here?) if you have anything important on it apart from the files you were transferring, but I think you'd just have to format it and it'll be working fine again.

it won't let me! it tries to format the disk that's supposedly in the drive but, obviously, doesn't succeed because there's nothing there to be formatted except the drive itself, of course...

So when you right click on the drive on my computer and click format and choose a quick format, it does nothing?

it says "windows was unable to complete the format" and, basically, yes....it does nothing

Boot to windows vista dvd and at the partition screen, select your USB drive and click FORMAT. once you are done, restart the system.

didn't work! the mass storage device just isn't there......

It seems that the USB device has worn out.