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Kingston DataTraveller / Windows 11 lost drive letter bug... still no fix???

Anonymous
2022-12-21T01:05:06+00:00

Hello all,

I too am facing the Kingston DataTraveller / Windows 11 bug. I've scoured the internet, tried all the solutions. I tried the "idiot" solutions (like, repartition the drive, reformat the drive, run chkdsk, and all the other pointless solutions. I tried more proper attempts to fix it, such as manually editing the registry, hexdumping the partition to check for incorrect formatting, etc. I'm surprised that Microsoft still hasn't released a fix for this! I'm obviously one of many many people suffering the same bug. To recap, this is the problem (read carefully)...

  • I have a Kingston DataTraveller 100 G3 64GB usb3 flash drive formatted NTSF (for the record, as per others experiencing this bug, the partition type is irrelevant, the bug occurs with exFAT and FAT32 also).
  • I plug it in, a drive letter populates, (D:) all good.
  • I unplug the drive, the drive letter remains, when I 2-click it comes up as inaccessible with error "A device which does not exist was specified."
  • When I re-plug the drive, it does not repopulate with a fresh drive letter, and when I click the still stuck original drive letter I get the same error (even though the stick is plugged back in). For the record, the "ding" does occur, indicating that the kernel registered the USB stick being plugged in.
  • I use diskpart, EaseUS, or any other partition utility, and the drive shows up with no letter. I issue a new drive letter (E:), it populates, everything works.
  • I unplug the drive, now E: is also stuck, along with D:, and now both have the same error, and when I re-plug, the drive does not repopulate under either letter, but it shows up under diskpart and I can now assign it to F:, and around and around we go.

DIAGNOSIS: Since Microsoft seem to not be bothered troubleshooting this, I spent my own time on it. The problem has to do with a registry bug with Win11. Here's what I did so far and discovered...

  • Device manager shows the drive present under "Disk Drives", I can see Kingston DataTraveler 3.0 USB Device
  • I open the properties, it shows device as "This device is working properly".
  • I hit "Populate" to get volume info, error "Volume information for this disk cannot be found."
  • I pull the Device Instance Path from the Details, and copy/paste the dev ID
  • I open up regedit and do a registry search for the dev ID and find a whole bunch of erroneous/corrupt KHLM keys for the device
  • When I try to delete the bad keys, I get error "cannot delete {53f5630d....... (bunch of characters)}: Error while deleting key.
  • There's tons of bad/corrupt keys, all non-deletable
  • And yes, I opened regedit as admin, checked the user permissions for each key to make sure I had full access, and all the other standard stuff.

At this point, I'm unsure how to proceed further. I'm thinking safe mode to try and delete those keys, but I suspect the problem will reoccur again anyway. I hope MS is working on this as we speak, I'm obviously one of many dealing with this new bug, but I'd appreciate any thoughts or ideas in the meantime. I'm stuck not being able to use my flash drives with my PC, and that's how I transfer my bodycam footage to/from home office PC and work office server.

Thanks,

Eric

Windows for home | Windows 11 | Devices and drivers

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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  1. Anonymous
    2022-12-22T13:24:44+00:00

    Hi Greg,

    Thanks for the reply, yes I definitely made sure it's not a caching conflict, that's the very frst thing I thought of. I don't cache to removables due to the fact that it cause corruptions if I yank out a drive shortly after a file transfer. That said, I still wait 30 seconds after file transfers before pulling a removable, it's just an old habit. But even if it was a cache corruption, it wouldn;t (or shouldn't) cause this type of behaviour, you would get a notice from Windows stating that there's an issue with the file system on the drive, and it would attempt self-repair, or the file would simply be corrupted. Like I said in my post, I did all the obvious fixes (what I call "idiot fixes", because one would feel like an idiot for not having thought of that solution themself lol). And I hexdumped the partition to check for obvious fat errors, and nothing stood out.

    What's interesting is that the problem seems to be limited to this brand/model of jump drive only. I have other brands, they don't replicate this problem. I also have other models of Kingston drives (older USB2 drives), and they also don't replicate this problem. Furthermore, the problem with this specific drive also occurs on my three other Win10 / Win11 PCs. It happens on my office Win10 desktop, my home office Win11 desktop, and my two Windows laptops. So I'm suspecting this bug that many are having with the hung drive letters on Kingston g3 drives is specific to this drive's hardware/fimware. I've tried on my various Linux machines that I use for writing firmware for bootcode and microcontrollers (C, ASM, ARM opcode/binary), and the problem doesn't occur with Linux. I can mount and dismount volumes to my heart's content. But that's not surprising being that Linux is much more robust than Windows due to the more direct interface between the human and the machine's kernel code.

    I'll go ahead and issue an official bug report to MS, but I'm guessing they already have dozens of them from the other users on the internet (and this very forum) who have the same problem. I've tried the solutions given to them, (scannow, shutdown /f, and so forth), but none worked for me just as it didn't work for them. The problem lies with Kingston and/or MS, which has to do with some incompatible glitch between the flash controller of these sticks and Windows. Unfortunately, with Windows everything is so locked down that us end users are unable to get into the 1s and 0s to see what the glitch is in real time.

    Thanks again for your help, if I ever do find the solution I'll be sure to update this post.

    Cheers,

    Eric

    3 people found this answer helpful.
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  2. Anonymous
    2022-12-22T13:37:29+00:00

    Eric, I would also contact Kingston support which has always been one of the best. They will surely want to know about it, may already, and they back all of their drives for life.

    2 people found this answer helpful.
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  3. Anonymous
    2022-12-22T15:21:57+00:00

    Also, just in case, you might try the drive in an older machine maybe running something earlier than Win 11 or even Win 10.

    1 person found this answer helpful.
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  4. Anonymous
    2022-12-22T15:01:26+00:00

    You might try using an admin command prompt and running Diskpart. I believe it is the lis dis command or selecting the drive and doing a detail dis on it.

    I had one the other day and noticed something did not look right but I don't remember exactly what it was.

    You might compare yours to this one.

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  5. Anonymous
    2022-12-21T02:32:44+00:00

    Hello Eric. I'm Greg, here to help you with this.

    First I've heard of it, and I have several Kingston DT USB3 sticks.

    Have you tried both the before and after settings since Safely Remove was ended as the removable drive default - something is hanging on that shouldn't:

    https://www.techspot.com/news/79551-windows-10-...

    https://www.digitalcitizen.life/do-you-want-sto...

    If that doesn't resolve it then I would report this as a bug to Microsoft using the Feedback Hub in Start Menu. You may be able to help improve this product/experience, especially if you are willing to share logs and other requested information. While they will probably not see this here in the forums, Microsoft developers DO read feedback from customers that comes in via the Feedback Hub, so that is a great way to share your thoughts on how to better serve you as a customer.

    Another thing that you can do is contact Kingston, which has always had the best Customer Support right down the road here in Huntington Beach, California, and backs all of it's products for life to either get them working or replaced: https://www.kingston.com/unitedstates/us/support

    You can also ask in the best hardware forums Tom's Hardware here: https://forums.tomshardware.com/

    Feel free to ask back any questions. Based on the detailed results you post back, I will have other suggestions if necessary.

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