Some USB memory sticks do not work when plugged in to laptop

I have a Windows 11 laptop (Acer Swift, Intel 11th-gen). I have several USB storage devices: one is an SSD in an enclosure with a USB cable. The other three are USB "flash drives" or "thumb drives" as they are variously called. The SSD and one of the flash drives are formatted NTFS: the others are FAT32.

One of the flash drives (happens to be a fairly old 1GB unit) works normally when plugged into a USB port. It is formatted with FAT32 and it gets assigned to drive letter D:. It works just as expected. So I think the USB hardware in my laptop is good.

With the other flash drives, and the SSD enclosure, when I plug one of them in, it appears as drive D: but I cannot access any files on it. Windows Explorer displays the "blue spinning/waiting" icon. The contents of the drive do not show up. If I rightclick and select "Format" for example, no error is seen but the format dialog never appears. I have to unplug the drive and reboot to clear this.

When this happens, the DISKPART command will not run: it shows the Microsoft copyright line and then "On computer: XXXX" but there it hangs. If I open services.msc and try to stop or restart the Virtual Disk Service (which is initially Running), it gets stuck for a long time and then reports "Windows could not stop the Virtual Disk service on Local Computer. Error 1053: The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion." The service status shows Stopping but it never stops.

I have gone into devmgmt.msc and removed the USB Controller devices and allowed them to be recreated on a reboot. This made no difference. Other devices (a mouse wireless nub on the same USB port) work normally. I tried both USB ports (one is 2.0 and one is 3.0) on the laptop but it makes no difference.

My first thought was that something is faulty with these three USB devices; but all of them connect normally to another Windows 11 laptop in my house. Can't tell if the problem here is related to USB ports, or Plug and Play, or the disk subsystem.

I should also mention that I have run the command
to make sure my Windows installation is OK. Also I have checked for updated drivers/BIOS from Acer (there are none) and tried to 'Update Driver' for the various USB things in devmgmt.msc (all were up to date)

On one of my desktop PCs, I was having some USB port difficulties. (I wasn't getting asked what to do with the device, even though I'd selected ask.)

I went into Device Manager, and deleted USB controllers one by one, until the connection to the keyboard and mouse disappeared. I then shut down the PC with a short power button press. When I rebooted, the USB ports behaved normally, after Windows re-installed the devices (which was pretty much instantaneous).

A caveat: a laptop may not be configured by default to shut down with a short power button press.

I'm wondering if you are plugging these devices directly into the laptop usb port or through an extender.

glasskuter said:

I'm wondering if you are plugging these devices directly into the laptop usb port or through an extender.

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Do you mean a USB hub?

bobkn said:

Do you mean a USB hub?

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Yes, I do. Thanks for clarifying that. My mind was out in left field. It's happening a lot these days. To the OP, are you using a usb hub? If so, is it a powered hub?

I don't know whether a USB thumb drive would demand much from an unpowered hub. It might.

willirwin167 said:

have several USB storage devices: one is an SSD in an enclosure with a USB cable. The other three are USB "flash drives" or "thumb drives" as they are variously called. The SSD and one of the flash drives are formatted NTFS: the others are FAT32.

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@Bobkin I was going by this statement. The OP told us he had all these externals but was vague as to how many he has plugged in (and how) at the same time. I ask because laptops don't come with many usb ports anymore. I believe that one has only 2 usb-a and 2 usb-c.

Are you sure your your usb port drivers are not corrupted?

Another thing that comes to mind is your usb port may be damaged at the motherboard level. Consult a technician. He should be able to confirm this.

Sorry, I don’t mean to offend you but Acer laptops do not exactly stand out for quality.

glasskuter said:

Yes, I do. Thanks for clarifying that. My mind was out in left field. It's happening a lot these days. To the OP, are you using a usb hub? If so, is it a powered hub?

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No: I am plugging the devices one at a time directly into ports on the laptop itself.

As a further experiment I tried plugging one of them into a hub (which is connected to a DELL docking station, which in turn is connected to the laptop's USB-C/Thunderbolt port). It seems to have the same problem when connected that way.

pewa said:

Are you sure your your usb port drivers are not corrupted?

Another thing that comes to mind is your usb port may be damaged at the motherboard level. Consult a technician. He should be able to confirm this.

Sorry, I don’t mean to offend you but Acer laptops do not exactly stand out for quality.

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No offence taken . But if the usb port on the mboard was bad, then I'd expect my first USB flash drive (the old 1GB one) to also fail; but it works just fine. Also the USB port successfully supports a wireless mouse receiver.

Regarding the USB port drivers, I did uninstall the "USB Root Hub 3.0" devices (there are two of them) under "Universal Serial Bus controllers" in devmgmt.msc. When I rebooted the machine Windows recreated these so I presume the drivers are good. I was interested to note that the driver has a date of "8/26/2025" (US format, so about a month ago). I wonder if there has been a driver update that has broken something? This is a Microsoft driver and the version is 10.0.26100.5074.

Investigating this further, it seems the problem may be affecting only devices which are formatted with NTFS.

I reformatted two USB thumb drives, which had been using NTFS, to FAT32 instead. (Had to use another laptop to do this.) Now they seem to work; can plug them in and out with no apparent problems.

My USB/SSD device cannot be formatted to FAT32 (got an error from the Format dialog; maybe the drive is too large, though its only 500GB?). I tried to reformat it to NTFS with the "quick format" unchecked. But this device still cannot be used on my main laptop; I always get the "spinning blue circle" icon and sometimes Explorer locks up or crashes when I plug it in.

So this begins to look like an NTFS problem rather than a USB problem, maybe. Note that the main system disk C: in this laptop is also an NTFS-formatted SSD, using an NVMe M.2 connector, and it is working normally.

willirwin167 said:

Investigating this further, it seems the problem may be affecting only devices which are formatted with NTFS.

I reformatted two USB thumb drives, which had been using NTFS, to FAT32 instead. (Had to use another laptop to do this.) Now they seem to work; can plug them in and out with no apparent problems.

My USB/SSD device cannot be formatted to FAT32 (got an error from the Format dialog; maybe the drive is too large, though its only 500GB?). I tried to reformat it to NTFS with the "quick format" unchecked. But this device still cannot be used on my main laptop; I always get the "spinning blue circle" icon and sometimes Explorer locks up or crashes when I plug it in.

So this begins to look like an NTFS problem rather than a USB problem, maybe. Note that the main system disk C: in this laptop is also an NTFS-formatted SSD, using an NVMe M.2 connector, and it is working normally.

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Most USB sticks are formatted with exFAT if they're larger than 32GB. For years FAT32 was limited to a 32GB partition size. Although MSC recently changed that, many formatting utilities I suspect still adhere to that size. I just tried to format that 64GB drive to FAT32 with Disk Management on a Windows 11 25H2 build, and it won't let me, only exFAT or NTFS is available! I just formatted a 64GB USB FLASH drive to NTFS and it works just like you'd expect a FLASH drive to work. It was formatted exFAT previously.

gunrunnerjohn said:

Most USB sticks are formatted with exFAT if they're larger than 32GB. For years FAT32 was limited to a 32GB partition size. Although MSC recently changed that, many formatting utilities I suspect still adhere to that size. I just tried to format that 64GB drive to FAT32 with Disk Management on a Windows 11 25H2 build, and it won't let me, only exFAT or NTFS is available! I just formatted a 64GB USB FLASH drive to NTFS and it works just like you'd expect a FLASH drive to work. It was formatted exFAT previously.

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Thanks: I have reformatted the SSD with exFAT and it now seems to be working OK. This will be fine for anything I might want to do with this device so I think I have a solution here.

It remains unknown why, as an NTFS device, it worked on one computer and not another. And why the other symptoms (DISKPART locking up, and the Virtual Disk Service refusing to stop/restart) were happening.

willirwin167 said:

It remains unknown why, as an NTFS device, it worked on one computer and not another. And why the other symptoms (DISKPART locking up, and the Virtual Disk Service refusing to stop/restart) were happening.

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The mysteries of the Universe (and Windows).