Problem Issue: Windows Will Not Assign Drive Letter To USB Flash Drive

This is happening on Win8 and Windows 10.
When I remove a USB drive and reconnect it, Windows will not assign a drive letter. Clearly this is a problem as every other computer I use assigns a drive letter.

There are three solutions. All of which will work:

1. You can go into Disk Management and select the device to assign a drive letter. This is a manual process and not ideal for each time you plug in a flash drive.
2. There’s a good chance the driver or registry entry for that device is rogue or corrupt. Use this USBScrub tool to remove the registry entry. Chances are this will fix the problem. USBScrub link
3. Use ‘diskpart’ and enable the automount feature.

• Open Command Prompt as Administrator (search for Command Prompt in the Start Menu, right click, Run as Administrator)
• Type ‘diskpart’ and hit Enter.
• Once in the ‘diskpart’ command prompt, type ‘automount enable’ and hit Enter.
• Type ‘exit’ and click Enter.

For solution number one from above, Disk Management is really the GUI version for diskpart, but with scaled-down functions compared to what diskpart can really do.

Diskpart has 37 commands that you can use to perform very cool tasks. The 38th command is

UPDATE: USB Scrub by Nexcopy now supports Win7, Win10 (32/64bit) and Windows 11

USB Registry Cleaner Tool which is FREE!

Did you know Windows can make over 260 registry entries with a single enumeration of a USB stick? This means for those with multiple flash drives, your registry will get extremely cluttered and bogged down.

With flash drives dirt cheap these days, you’ll find at least a couple dozen going into your computer throughout the year. That would be over 6,240 registry entries.

USB Scrub is a free utility from Nexcopy which performs a deep cleaning of those unused drivers and registry edits.

We gave USB Scrub a try, and it worked great. We went from enumerating a single USB stick in 45 seconds to enumerating that stick in less than 12 seconds.

In addition, if you have a USB stick that doesn’t perform correctly or the Windows OS doesn’t see it, chances are the USB Scrub will clear up those problems and your drive will work once again. This is because a registry entry can become corrupt, and simply clearing it out will resolve your issue.

So let’s take a closer look.

Using RegShot (a free application which takes a snapshot before and after an event and compares only the changed registry values), I took a snapshot before and after a USB stick was connected and ejected. The result was this:

• 78 Registry Keys created
• 183 Registry Values added
• 261 Registry edits in total!

Here is a snapshot. Click the image to get the full text file:

Next, I took a snapshot of the registry before a stick was connected, then ran USB Scrub, then took the second registry snapshot. This is what I got:

• 1 Registry Key added
• 3 Registry Values added

Clearly we have a big difference. Clearly we have a great cleaning tool for USB devices in Windows.

If you have a USB flash drive not working correctly, a slow computer, or you are a heavy user of removable drives, give USB Scrub a try. You’ll see a noticeable difference in USB enumeration.

As a closing note, when the enumeration speed went from 45 seconds to 12 seconds, USB Scrub reported that it cleared over 9,000 registry entries.

USB Scrub is a free utility. There is no malware or spyware.

Unfortunately, USB Scrub only supported Windows XP in the past. The maker, Nexcopy, has now updated support for Windows 7 and Windows 10. (Does not support Windows 8.)

UPDATE: Download link now supports Windows 7 and Windows 10 (32/64bit).

Download USB Scrub. Source: EverythingUSB.com.