My laptop won’t detect my flashdrive all of a sudden
 

I am using windows xp service pack 3. Whenever I plugin my flashdrive into any USB port, I will hear the sound you hear when something is plugged in, and it appears in the safely remove hardware icon, but it doesn’t show up as a drive in “my computer”. Any idea why this is happening? Is there anything I can do about this? Whenever I plug it into a Mac computer (not laptop), it doesn't detect it either.

Thanks.

Update: my other flashdrive doesn't get detected either. When I go to my computer-> manage-> disk management, I can open it through there (it shows up as a drive). It just doesn't show up as a drive when I open up "my computer".

Make sure the drive is assigned a unique letter under disk management.

It is. But I can only open it from disk management.

But you CAN open it on Windows Explorer by typing in the drive letter, only that you don't see it listed?

Strange.