Maybe you have had it once: You have a USB stick connected to your computer but Windows doesn't open it and if you look in 'My Computer' or in the explorer there is no USB stick.

Where is my USB stick? Why doesn't Windows see my USB stick?

This is a known issue in Windows XP. This could happen if you are using network drives for example. Let me explain the next situation.
On your computer you have the following:

• A drive (diskette)
• C drive (hard disk 1)
• D drive (hard disk 2)
• E drive (DVD drive)
• F drive (network drive)

Now if you connect your USB stick to your computer, the computer wants to assign a drive letter to this USB stick. Windows looks to the drives which are physically connected to the computer and makes the drive letter for the USB stick one letter higher in the alphabet.
The problem is that Windows only looks to the drives physically connected to the computer and doesn't recognize drive F as a drive because this isn’t a physical drive but a shared folder on a computer on the network.Because the drive letter F is already in use by a network drive your USB stick doesn’t get a drive letter. So in fact Windows has given the network drive the letter F and wants to give the USB stick the letter F as well.

If you want to avoid this problem with network drives you begin assigning the highest possible letter to the network drives. (For example Z, Y, X, W etc.). This is the best way to assign drive letters to network drives.

Solutions:
For this problem there are several solutions to solve this.

1. Assign the highest possible letters to network drives. (to avoid this problem)
2. Disconnect the network drive F. (USB stick will get the letter F)
3. Assign another letter to your USB stick using the Disk management tool.

The Disk management tool is what will be explained down here.

You can start Disk management by clicking with the right mouse button on 'My computer' and in the menu which appears you click 'Manage'.
Now the computer management tool is shown. In the tree on the left you click on 'Storage' and then you click 'Disk Management'.

In Disk management you can see the properties of the disks in your computer.
Here you can do several setting. To make it more understanding here is a screenshot of the Disk management tool.

• Hard disk(s) installed in your computer
• CD/DVD drives installed on your computer
• USB disk(s) connected to your computer
• Camera’s connected to your computer
• SD/MMC/CF Cards etc.
• Etcetera

On the screen shot above you see there are 2 partitions on Disk 0.
There is a USB stick on Disk 1.
There is a digital photo camera connected to the computer on Disk 2.
There is a DVD-Rom player in the computer on Cd-Rom drive 0.
There is a second DVD-Rom drive in the computer on Cd-Rom drive 1.

In Disk management you can see the status of the drives in your computer. For example you can see the File system type, status, capacity, free space, etc.
If you click on a disk with the right mouse button, a menu appears with several options what to do.
The next screen will show the options and every option will be explained.

1. Open
   It just opens the drive.
2. Explore
   Opens the explorer and opens at the disk you clicked on<./li>
3. Mark Partion as Active (only accessible if the disk is a partition)
   This informs the basic input/output system (BIOS) or Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) that the partition or volume is a valid system partition or system volume.
4. Change Drive Letter and Paths.
   This is the option to change the drive letter of a drive, usb stick, cd/dvd drive etc.
5. Delete partition (only accessible you click on a partition)
   Here you can delete the partition. If you delete the partition, all data on this partition will be lost.
6. Properties
   This opens the properties of the drive. This is the same screen as you click properties of a disk in the 'My computer' section.
7. Help
   Opens the Windows XP help function.

Coming back to the problem with the USB stick that has the same drive letter as your network drive you can change the drive letter of the USB stick.

• You right click in the Disk management on the USB stick.
• Then you click 'Change Drive Letter and Paths'.
• 3 buttons will be shown in the next screen: 'Add', 'Change', 'Remove'.
  Click 'Change'.
  The next screen is shown.

• Here you select a drive letter you want to assign to your USB stick. For example 'U'.
  (You assign a letter to a USB stick itself, NOT to a USB port, so if you use another USB stick you again have to assign a different drive letter to it).
• Then you click 'Ok' and now your USB stick will be shown.