XP Memory card Icons - sometimes you have them - or not!

[stduc]

Permit me to start by apologising to you good people. This is more of a winge than anything. But if your curious, read on.

When I first installed XP - prior to SP2 I had a nice little icon in 'My Computer' for my card reader. Thus

When a card was inserted it changed to this

This was very nice and very handy. So when I had a major disk failure and had to install XP again I was a bit disappointed to get a standard disk icon. As I was installing straight to SP2 I just assumed it was an SP2 issue and thought no more about it. Until today, when I was finally ready to re-install XP SP2 for the last time. (The previous install had been on a borrowed hard drive). I was very surprised, but none the less pleased to find, on inserting the card reader to a USB port to get the little icons back.

Now, the only hardware changes have been to hard disks. The last two installs have been off the same CD-ROM. I used the same USB port. As far as I can think I haven't done anything different. I haven't applied any patches/updates yet, nor have I installed any different software nor in a different order.

I'm pleased I have these handy little icons back. But baffled as to what XP is playing at!

PC's & XP - don't you just love em!

 

[bcastner]

A guess: it took several restarts to properly identify USB devices on your system:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=873169

 

[stduc]

Nope - Both times, straight away, new hardware found ..... ready to use. Hardware worked both times, just fine, no issues. Just different icons!!!!

 

[bcastner]

From the link above: "Note You can also install Windows XP SP2, and then disconnect and reconnect the USB devices that are connected to your computer. By doing this, you start the Plug and Play utility. The Plug and Play utility updates the version numbers for the drivers."

 

[micker377]

SP-2
I have several "thumb" drives. The USB 2.0 drives show as (for instance) "M" (with the definition as the brand name of the stick. When I use a 1.1 drive, I just get "M" (with no identifacation. Maybe just the particular brand of drives, maybe a difference between ver 1.1 and 2.0.

 

[stduc]

Thanks everyone, but I have to say It looks like I didn't make myself clear. Nothing apart from the brand of hard drive changed. Same computer, same card reader, even the same card.

But, obviously something was different. I must have done something in a different order. I can't remember. Maybe I installed my anti malware software in a different order? Who knows?

I guess I really posted this as yet another example of how XP can change its behaviour for the subtlest of reasons. Here we have essentially the same hardware, same software, same clean start. Yet different result. OK - so its only a change in icon displayed. So its trivial. Or is it?