One of my flash drives suddenly died today. It all happened when XP suddenly froze for some reason. after rebooting, the device was dead - XPdetected it as a 0mb device (and attempted to format it as such - which didn’t work)
After a little research I was able to revive the drive, and heres the procedure (pretty easy):
- Download and install the HP Drive Key Boot Utility
or download here: http://www.eurodownload.com/download.php?software_id=129131 - Open the desktop icon and select the correct flash drive under device
- Select the file system you want to format to (FAT, FAT32, NTFS)
- Tick Quick Format
- Click start
Officially this software (HP Drive Key Boot Utility) is meant for HP disks, but unofficially it seems to work fine at formatting most flash media, even digital camera cards.
You should remove the software from your computer
- by going to the Control Panel
- Add remove programs
- find HP...
- press remove.
