Hardware

Make sure all you have all the updates for your system of vista. Go to the motherboard web site to make sure you have the up to date drivers for vista, if not then download them and install them.
I hope this works for you.

I had encounter the same problem today. I resolved the problem by doing this steps:
1. First search for usbstor.*, make a copy in in the folder of your choice.
2. Plug-in your usb flash drive, let windows search for the driver. If this does not work, try the next step.
3. Go to device manager then use the update driver option then search for the usbstor.sys file. Choose Allow if it ask you to install it. If it still doesn't work, the step # 4.
4. Open registry editor then go to "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\USBSTOR " change the value of START to 3 if it is set to 4. do the same for the following reg keys: "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet002\Services\USBSTOR" and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet003\Services\USBSTOR
when your done doing this, repeat step no. 3.

Hope this works...

Diegs

I had this same problem. After 2 days of searching found info that may help.
info at:
http://tim.mackey.ie/VistaDriverProblemsFormacUSBHardDrive.aspx

Basic points are some bug in Vista. You have to delete some file and presto it should work.

Apparently there is some bug with Vista where you can get a corrupt driver cache file and if you delete it then it will solve all these problems.
The culprit file is called INFCACHE.1 and it's located in c:\windows\inf. I discovered this on a newsgroup post. This is the relevant parts:

"The solution to this annoying problem (I had it on one PC), seems to be to locate and delete the file INFCACHE.1, which may be corrupted and causing the problem. To delete this file, you will first have to modify its permissions so the users group can access it (right-click on the file->Properties->Security). INFCACHE.1 file. It's located at C:\Windows\inf (scroll down to the file). (Note: to see INFCACHE.1, you must set Windows Explorer to display hidden and system files)

When modify these system files, i usually find i have to take ownership first for my own user account, then add myself to the permissions with full control. then you can delete it, or rename it to X_INFCACHE.1, etc."

Hope it works.

I have a similar problem. My Vista can't find and istall the USB flash drive driver automatically. It only tells me of a new hardware and opens a window for installing the driver. So every time I plug in a USB flash disk I have to browse to System32 folder and install the driver from there. Everything had been fine before. It all started when I installed drivers for my new Wacom tablet, which asks for reinstalling every now and then as well. So I guess there is a conflict but I can't figure out how to put it all back in order. Any tips?

1. Go to Device Manager (Control Panel > System > Device Manager [Task on the left] );
2. Search for a "Unknow device" that should be appearing with an interrogation mark next to it.
3. Right click and choose "Update Driver Software"
4. Choose the 2nd option, "Browse my computer for driver software"
5. Choose the option "Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer"
6. Choose Storage devices or mass storage devices, something like that.
7. Then choose the driver for "Generic Volume".
8. The USB drive should be installed and ready for use =).

I just bought an Emachine and it would not recognize my attache 1gb flash drive.
The forums had many different solutions to this but the simplest seemed to be the one which suggested to make sure that Vista had the latest updates. I went to the Microsoft update site and found that there were about 30 updates and after doing all of them, there was no problem with any of my flash drives. I did not realize that perhaps this new machine bough from best buy may have been sitting around for a while. The moral of the story is when you buy a new computer update the operating system first before doing any other kind of troubleshooting :).