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rrkrrk99's avatar
rrkrrk99
Copper Contributor
Oct 03, 2025

USB 128GB flash drive only works in Win 10 safe mode--not normal Win 10 mode

I have a Lexar 128GB flash drive that only works properly in Win 10 safe mode on my two Win 10 desktop machines. In normal Win 10 the flash drive, when inserted, shows up for roughly 3 - 5 seconds in File Explorer (and the PC dings that an external device was inserted), then the flash drive disappears from File Explorer and doesn't appear in Disk Management anymore. The Windows Explorer message "USB device not recognized" keeps appearing. Other flash drives of different make and sizes work fine in the normal Win 10 of both my Win 10 PCs. So it must be just this particular flash drive for a reason I can't figure out. I have watched countless YouTube videos on getting your flash drive recognized and nothing I've tried works. I've disabled my Norton 360 and that didn't help. Wondering if anyone can think of an new way to get this flash drive to work in normal Win 10? Again, tried all kinds of recommended things in YouTube videos and articles--in Disk Management, Disk Manager, CMD prompt, DiskPart, Windows PowerShell, disabled Norton 360, talked to Lexar tech support (told me to talk to Microsoft), reformatted the drive in multiple ways, disabled USB Selective Suspend settings, used Rufus to format in nonbootable mode, and through one of the attempts (maybe the attrib -h -s -r /s /d *.* command) found autorun.inf and autorun.ico on the drive and deleted those. The crazy part is it works perfectly fine in safe mode, but is only briefly recognized before disappearing in normal Win 10. Thanks in advance for any ideas!

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