won't accept flash drive

[mad60]

My Inspiron 2650 won't accept any brand of flash drive.   I am running Windows XP.   I tried to plug in a flash drive 1 year ago, and it would not work then.  Recently I bought several other brands, and no luck.  I called Dell and asked for their help.  I have talked to Dell for literally 12 hours over the last 3 days.  They finally told me the reason was that my hard drive was failing, and I needed to replace it.  However, I do not have any problems with my computer other than this flash drive thing.
Anyone experience this problem with flash drives?

[GX1_Man]

Well just for grins I would download the free diagnostics from the appropriate drive maker's site and test that drive for fitness pronto.

What did they think the issue was? You're talking about a memory card of some sort or a USB pen drive? What brands have not worked?

[mad60]

brands I tried Iomagic, sony, Pny and none of them worked.
I ran a chkdsk and it said there were 7 million allocation units, and 3 million 700 thousand available.
I get the feeling Dell just got tired of working on my problem and not finding answers, so they just said 'your hard drive needs replacing' to get out of helping me further.  Lets face it, I can't prove them wrong, although I am not having problems using the computer.  It just won't find any drivers for the flash drive.
Thanks for responding.

[GX1_Man]

And did you test your hard drive? Do you have Service Pack 2 loaded?

[street1 (RIP)]

You may have to do a lot of reading at usbman site but,
you may as well be familiar with it.....You'll be there again.

http://www.usbman.com/Drivers%20and%20Patches.htm

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=94991901-bfc4-485e-bcae-c9df0accdaae&displaylang=en
_______________________________________ _______________
I am not being 'sanctimonious' with you.I must use this word until
the 'WOTW' club is happy with me.Rob has the propensity to help
if you'll learn. He's a good guy.

Hello,Rob.

[mad60]

I have Service Pack 2

How do I determine the drive manufacturer?  The lartop is a dell inspirion but I'm sure they just assembled someone's driver.
Thanks for your help.

I'm headed to the USB site to do some reading

[GX1_Man]

You can either run Everest Home or Belarc Advisor to get the hard drive maker.

www.belarc.com

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download4181.html

[mad60]

Thanks for the info
I am about to start the drive test now.
I'll let you know the results